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Marie Loratto Lilly 



THE GEORGIC 



Book.. r ^ 



m GRATEFUL MEMORY 
OF 

SISTEE MAKY MELETIA 



1 

\ 



Ijefperia 

Supplementary Series: 
STUDIES m ENGLISH PHILOLOGY 

Edited by James W. Bright 
===== Number 6 = 



THE GEORGIC 

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE 
VERGILIAN TYPE OF DIDACTIC POETRY 



BY 

MAEIE LORETTO LILLY, Ph. D., 

Sometime Fellow of the Johns Hopkins University 



baltimore 
The Johns Hopkins Press 
1919 



^13 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I page 

INTRODUCTION 1 

CHAPTER II 

The Creation of the Georgic Type 9 

1. Vergil's Georgics, their relation to the Works and 
Days of Hesiod 9 

2. Subject matter of the Georgics 13 

CHAPTER III 
The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral .... 19 

1. Distinction between the Georgic and the Pastoral 19 

2. The Pastoral, a literary type of frequent occur- 
rence, made famous by great poets ; the Georgic, a 
literary type coincident ally neglected 26 

3. Variations in the development of the Georgic com- 
pared with variations in the development of the 
Eclogue 37 

4. Variations 'of the Georgic classified 47 

Hv 

part. CHAPTER IV 

Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 51 

1. Early Italian Poems 'on Agriculture 51 

2. Early English non-Vergilian Georgics 52 

3. Sixteenth^Century Italian Poems on Agriculture 59 

4. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Poems on 
Agriculture 68 

v 



Table of Contents 



CHAPTEB V 

Didactic Poems on Gardens 75 

1. From Columella to William Mason 75 

2. William Mason's "The English Garden" and 
Delille's " Jardins " 84 

3. Louis de Fontanes' " Maison Rustique." Its rela- 
tion to Delille's " Jardins " and the fashion of the 
English landscape garden 90 

4. Oowper's georgic on the " Garden " ; William 
Knight's didactic poem, " The Landscape " 94 

CHAPTER VI 
Didactic Poems on Field Sports. . . . , 101 

I. Of Hunting 102 

1. Gratius, Oppian, and Nemesianus 102 

2. Medieval Poems on the Chase 110 

3. Sixteenths entury Didactics on the Chase 116 

4. Eighteenth-Century Didactics on the Chase 124 

II. Of Fishing. The Halieutic 135 

1. Oppian of Cilicia 

2. John Dennys' " Secrets of Angling " 

3. Later Seventeenth-Century Didactic Poems on 
Angling 151 

4. Eighteenth-Century Didactic Poems on Fishing. . 153 

5. Nineteenth-Century Didactic Poems on Angling. . 165 

CHAP TEE WI 
Conclusion 170 



PKEFACE 



This contribution to the study of the Vergilian type 'of didac- 
tic poetry was begun at the Johns Hopkins University at the 
suggestion of Professor James W. Bright; the first chapters 
were written and published, in part fulfillment of the require- 
ments for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 

The subject that I have undertaken is a large one, leading 
into many almost untouched fields. The little that I have 
accomplished is hardly more than an introduction to the subject. 
I have regretted to leave unstudied so many developments of the 
georgic, particularly in Italian literature ; however, altho I have 
worked badly, I have hoped that I might awaken in others, who 
can work well, an interest in this curious and long-neglected type 
of poetry. 

I wish to make grateful acknowledgment to Mr. Hyder E. 
Rollins, who very kindly read for me at Harvard rare editions 
of John Lawrence's Paradise Regained, or The Art of Garden- 
ing, and Charles Clifford's The British Angler, interesting 
poems that would otherwise have been inaccessible to me ; and 
to Professor Wilfrid P. Mustard, whose untiring aid has been 
invaluable to me, not only in the use of Greek and Latin mate- 
rials, but at every other point connected with my work. Finally, 
I wish to thank Professor Bright, to whom I owe chiefly what 
little may be of worth in this study. My faults in workmanship, 
particularly in the last chapters written amidst many difficulties 
and interruptions, I regret, mainly, because they indicate so 
great a departure from the ideals of scholarship that I have 
acquired under his guidance and inspiration. 

Dominican College, San Rafael, California. 
March 26, 1919. 



vii 



THE GEORGIC 



CHAPTEK I 



Introduction 

In 1697, Addison in his " Essay on the Georgics " 1 complains 
of the neglect of these poems and of their confusion with the 
pastoral. " There has been abundance of criticism spent on 
Virgil's Pastorals and Aeneids/ J he writes, " but the Georgics 
are a subject which none of the critics have sufficiently taken 
into their consideration, most of them passing it over in silence, 
or casting it under the same head with Pastoral- — a division by 
no means proper, unless we suppose the style of a Husbandman 
ought to be imitated in a Georgic, as that of a shepherd is in 
Pastoral. But though the scene of both these Poems lies in the 
same place ; the speakers in them are of a quite different char- 
acter, since the precepts of husbandry are not to be delivered 
with the simplicity of a Plowman, but with the address of a 
Poet. !No rules therefore that relate to Pastoral, can any way 
affect the Georgics, since they fall under that class of Poetry, 
which consists in giving plain and direct instructions to the 
reader; whether they be Moral duties, as those of Theognis 
and Pythagoras; or Philosophical Speculations, as those of A ra- 
tus and Lucretius; or Rules of practice, as those of Hesiod and 
Virgil/' 

One can hardly agree with Addison that the critics have ne- 
glected Vergil's Georgics; and there is evidence that from their 
first appearance the didactics that rival the De Rerum Natura 
were not denied due honor. The long list of translations, and 
the various editions of the Georgics annotated in many lan- 

1 This essay was contributed anonymously as an introduction to Dryden's 
translation of the Georgics. It was written as early as 1693. See Hurd's 
note, The Works of Adddson, ed. Bohn, London, 1862, p. 154. 

1 



2 



The Georgic 



guages bear witness to the devoted labor spent on Vergil's agri- 
cultural treatises. Various recent publications, 2 moreover, 
testify to the living interest in the poems that have been pro- 
nounced the most finished product of antiquity. But, so far 
as I am able to discover, of the georgic as a type, closely related 
to the pastoral, although essentially different from it, nothing 
definite or detailed has been written in English since Addison's 
complaint in 1697. As for French critics, they seem also to 
have neglected the subject of the georgic as a type. Collections 
of Italian georgics have been edited 3 and there is some Italian 
criticism on the georgic poetry of Italy, 4 but unfortunately 
neither these collections of " Italian Georgics," nor the critical 
essays have so far been accessible to me: of the latter I know 
only what is conveyed by the titles. 

One cannot say that, like the georgic, the pastoral has been 
neglected. With finer understanding of the subject than that 
which is manifest in the age of Addison, the critics have con- 
tinued to discuss the imitations of Vergil and of Theocritus. 
Symonds, 5 with justice, refers to "the whole hackneyed ques- 
tion of Bucolic poetry." Certainly no student can remain igno- 
rant of the pastoral as a type, of its origin, of its characteristics, 
of its developments as a literary genre, of the recurring periods 
of favor and disfavor through which it has passed. But if, 
incidentally, the critics touch upon the difference in type be- 
tween the Eclogues and the Georgics of Vergil, it is usually to 

2 Meta Glass, The Fusion of Stylistic Elements in Vergil's Georgics, Nh 
Y., Columbia Univ., 1913; T. F. Royd, The Beasts, Birds, and Bees of Ver- 
gil: a naturalist's handbook to the Georgics, with a preface by W. Warde 
Fowler, Oxford, B. H. Blackwell, 1914; T. C. Williams, The Georgics and 
Eclogues of Vergil, with an introd. by G. H. Palmer, Harvard Univ. 
Press, 1915; Les Georgiques, Texte Latin, par Paul Lejay, Paris, 1915. 

3 1 Poemi Georgici, Francesco Bonsignori, Lucca, 1785 ; Giovanni Silves- 
tri, Milano, 1826. 

4 Felippo Re, Delia poesia georgica degli Italiani, Bologna, 1809; L. Gi- 
rardelli, Dei poemi georgici nostrali, Goriza, 1900; D. Merlini's Saggio di 
ricerche sulla satira contro il villano, Torino, Loscher, 1894, probably 
treats of poems that fall under the head of mock-georgics. 

5 J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, London, 1902, Vol. n, p. 245. 



Introduction 



3 



notice the superiority of workmanship in the latter, or to con- 
trast the general character of the two series of poems. Sellar, 6 
for example, observes that Vergil was marked among his con- 
temporaries as the poet of Nature and rural life. The Eclogues, 
he observes, are of a light type; the general Roman spirit de- 
manded of its highest literature that it should have either some 
direct practical use or contribute in some way to the sense of 
national greatness. Glover 7 discusses the difference in spirit 
between the Eclogues and the Georgics: " the great note " of the 
Eclogues, youthful happiness, the life of the Shepherd, an easy 
life, touched sometimes by youthful grief that is never incon- 
solable ; in the Georgics, " the grim realization that life involves 
a great deal more work than Menalcas and the rest had thought, 
hard work all the year round, vigilance never to be remitted, 
and labor which it is ruin to relax. " In general, however, the 
commentators seem to take it for granted that the reader will 
perceive of necessity the essential difference between the two 
types. Yet one continually finds that, in spite of Addison's 
emphatic protest, students confuse the georgic with the pastoral. 

Of the few writings that I have been able to discover on the 
imitations of the Georgics there is almost nothing that is of any 
value as a study of the type. In Conington's edition of Vergil, 8 
there is a section on the " Later Didactic Poets of Rome," an 
essay that is valuable in the history of the georgic, and that 
gives a general idea of the manner in which the Vergilian model 
was imitated from the earliest period. A piece of work en- 
titled Virgilio nella storia della Poesia Didascalica Latina, by D. 
Renzi, 9 promises valuable information ; but I have been unable 
to consult it. Dunlop 10 has some comments on a few of the 

• W. Y. Sellar, The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age, Virgil, Oxford, 
1908, pp. 174 ff. 

7 T. R. Glover, Studies in Vergil, London, Methuen and Co., 1904, pp. 
30 IT. 

8 J. Conington, The Works of Vergil, London, 1872, Vol. I, p. 389. 
9 Avella, 1907. 

10 J. Dunlop, History of Roman Lit. during the Augustan Age. London, 
1828. Vol. m, pp. 138 ff. 



4 



The Georgic 



imitations of the Georgics, but his remarks are even more gen- 
eral respecting the type than those of Conington. For example, 
he observes that " The Rusticus of Politian ( in Virgilii Georgi- 
con enarratione pronunciata ' is an abridgement of the subject 
of that poem and several passages are nearly copied from it." 
After having briefly considered several other imitations, he 
comments on the great debt of Thomson to Vergil and points out 
passages in the Seasons, imitated, or almost translated, from the 
Georgics. 

Ginguene 11 has a valuable chapter on the Italian didactics 
of the sixteenth century. He sketches briefly the contents of 
most of the Italian georgics of the period, but altho he com- 
ments generally on the fact that these poems follow Vergil as 
a model, he says nothing of their particular adaptations of the 
features peculiar to the georgic type. Incidentally, he shows 
that other writers, who have considered imitations of the Geor- 
gics, have done so carelessly. An enthusiastic admirer of Luigi 
Alamanni's Coltivazione, Ginguene protests against the Trench 
neglect of this important poem, a work written and first pub- 
lished in Trance. In particular he reproaches Jacques Delille, 
Saint-Lambert, and a certain de Rosset. Delille is scored, be- 
cause, in the introduction to his translation of the Georgics, he 
announces that he cannot refrain from speaking of the poems 
for which Vergil has furnished the idea and the model, after 
which announcement, he considers Vaniere's Praedium Rusti- 
cum, Rapin's Jardins, Thomson's Seasons, and Saint-Lambert's 
Saisons, without mentioning Luigi Alamanni. Saint-Lambert 
is reproached, because, in his discours preliminaire, 12 he writes 
of the Georgics of Vergil and of les Georgiques plus detailles de 
Vaniere, and neglects the opportunity of speaking of the georgics 
of Alamanni. De Rosset is complained against, because, in an 

11 P. L. Ginguene, Hist. Lit. d'ltalie, Paris, 1824, 2e ed. T. 9, ch. xxxv, 
pp. Iff. 

12 Ginguene assumes that the reader is familiar with this work : he does not 
state where it is to be found. See J. F. Saint-Lambert, Les Saisons, " Dis- 
cours Preliminaire," Paris, 1795. 



Introduction 



5 



introductory discourse on georgic poetry prefixed to a poem on 
agriculture, 13 tie writes at length on Hesiod and at still greater 
length on Vergil, after which he passes abruptly to Eapin and 
Vaniere, without seeming to know that another georgic poet 
(Alamanni) had existed in the meantime. 

Saint-Lambert's discussion 14 is of no value as a study of the 
georgic type as a whole, but it is important in the history of the 
development of the eighteenth century variation of the type due 
to Thomson's Seasons. Delille's introduction 15 is of interest, 
since he makes a defense of the georgic. He also considers 
Vaniere' s Praedium Rusticum very briefly and compares it with 
Vergil's Georgics, not, however, with any reference to Vaniere's 
use of the distinctive features of the Vergilian type. This is 
followed by some general criticism of Rapin's Gardens, and 
Thomson's Seasons, and mention is made of the existence of two 
other poems on the seasons by French writers who are not named. 
Delille's preface to L'Homme des Champs 16 is of interest with 
respect to the broad meaning of the word " georgic " in Trench 
poems of this class, but the French critic is no more detailed in 
his discussion of this type than he is in the introduction to his 
translation of the Georgics. Whether Rosset's discourse is of 
value or not, I am unable to say, for his work is 'naccessible 
to me. 

In histories of Italian literature, 17 there occur brief notices 
of Italian didactics, and of Italian georgics, among the latter 

13 The reader's familiarity with de Rosset, as with Saint-Lambert, is as- 
sumed. For a notice of the life of Pierre Fulcrand de Rosset, who died at 
Paris, in 1788, the author of a poem on agriculture in nine books, the first 
six of which appeared at Paris in 1744, the complete edition at Lausanne, 
in 1806, cp. Pierre Larousse, Diet. Univ. de la XIXe Siecle, T. 13, p. 1302. 

14 Op. cit. 

15 J. Delille, (Euvres, Les Georgiques, Vol. i, " Discours Preliminaire," ed. 
P. F. Tissot, Paris, 1832-33. 

16 J. Delille, L'Homme des Champs, ou Les Georgiques Francoises, Paris, 
1805, p. 18. 

17 See, for example, G. Tiraboschi, Stor. della Lett. Ital. Milano, 1822-26. 
T. v., p. 864, T. vi, p. 1428, T. vn, pp. 1780, 1786 ff., T. xm, pp. 2119, 
2136, 2137 ff. Stor. Lett, d'ltal., Milano, F. Flamini, " II Cinquecento," pp. 



6 



The Georgic 



being considered only poems that treat of agricultural subjects. 
Concerning the relation of these poems to Vergil's didactics, we 
are told at most, however, that they are written in imitation of 
the Georgics. 

Flamini cites a study of Valvasone's Caccia 18 that is probably 
of value ; but I have been unable to see it. Cavicchi 19 shows 
definitely the relations between Vergil and Kucellai, but he does 
not consider Rucellai's use of the chief features of the georgic 
type. Altho Ginguene complains of the Trench neglect of Ala- 
manni, more appears to have been written on La Coltivazione 
than on any other Italian didactic. In a valuable Verona 
edition of Alamanni's Coltivazione and Kucellai's Api, pub- 
lished 1745, the Vergilian borrowings and imitations are cited 
in the annotations of Giuseppe Bianchini da Prato on La Colti- 
vazione and of Eoberto Tito on Le Api. Gaspary mentions 
several studies of La Coltivazione 20 that I have been unable to 
see. Hauvette 21 considers the poem in detail, commenting on 
its relation to Vergil's Georgics, but beyond remarking that 
Alamanni scorns the digressions which are so important a part 
of Vergil's poems, he does not discuss the conventions of the 
georgic. 

Most historians of Trench literature are silent concerning 
French georgics; histories of English literature have almost 
nothing to say of English georgics. Prefaces to English 

110, 440-2, 538, 574; T. Concari, "II Settecento," 272, 237, 277, 278; G. 
Mazzoni, " L'Ottocento," 78, 774. A. Gaspary, Stor. delta Lett. Ital., tr. 
dal Tedesco da Nicolo Zingarelli, Torino, 1887, V, n, pt. n, pp. 142 ff., 197, 
319. 

18 L. Pizzio, La poesia didascalica e la " Caccia " di E. da Valvasone, 
Udine, 1892. 

19 F. Cavicchi, II Libro IV delle Georgiche di Virgilio e " Le Api " di G. 
Rucellai, Teramo, 1900. 

20 F. Caccialanza, Le Georgiche di Virgilio e la " Coltivazione " di Luigi 
Alamanni,, Susa, 1892; G. Naro, V Alamanni e la Coltivazione, Siracusa, 
1897; L. Girardelli, Dei poemi georgici nostrali ed in particolare della 
Coltivazione di L. Alamamni, Gorizia, 1900, cp. above, p. 2. 

21 H. Hauvette, Luigi Alamanni (1495-1566), sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris, 
1903, pp. 263 ff. 



Introduction 



7 



imitations of the Georgics sometimes contain more or less 
general references to Vergil 22 as the model followed ; occa- 
sionally British borrowings from Vergil are noted by the bor- 
rowers themselves. 23 critic can pass over Thomson's debt 
to Vergil in The Seasons. Logie Robertson 24 has some important 
comments on it. Macaulay 25 dwells upon it at greater length ; 
and Otto Zippel 26 in his variorum edition of The Seasons notes 
the resemblances and borrowings with all their changes, line 
for line. Tejay 27 discussing French imitations of the Georgics 
writes suggestively of the influence of Thomson's Seasons in 
helping to make agriculture a mode in French literature. He 
remarks briefly on the translations and poems of Delille, on Les 
Saisons of Saint-Lambert, and on Les Mois of Boucher. But 
no one has studied Thomson's Seasons as a development of the 
georgic type, the chief model of those eighteenth century " geor- 
giques franchises " that represent no attempt to convey 
practical instructions, but still illustrate almost all the motives 
of Vergil's Georgics. Professor W. P. Mustard has contributed 
an article on " Vergil's Georgics and the British Poets," 28 
in which he points out definitely almost every passage in British 
literature echoing or imitating the Georgics, gives a list of Eng- 
lish poems " professedly or manifestly " imitations of the Ver- 
gilian didactics, and notes a number of the favorite Vergilian 
conventions ; but it does not fall within his purpose to discuss 
the georgic as a literary type. 

It would require prolonged investigation to prepare one's self 
for a complete treatise on the georgic as a type. In my re- 
stricted study of the subject I shall attempt, first, to define the 

22 Cp. Somerville, Preface to The Chase; Akenside, The Pleasures of the 
Imagination. 

23 Cp. Cowper, footnote to The Task, ill, 429, a misquotation of Georg. n, 
82; Gray's note on Ode to Spring. 

24 Thomson's Seasons and Castle of Indolence, Oxford, 1891. 

25 G. C. Macaulay, James Thomson, London, Macmillan & Co., 1908. 

26 Palaestra, lxvi. 

27 Op. cit., Introd., p. xxxvii. 

28 Am. J. Phil, xxix, 1 ff. 



s 



The Georgic 



georgic as a type and to study it with special reference to its 
relation to the pastoral; second, to sketch the most prominent 
features of the historical development of the georgic; third, to 
write in detail, so far as my material permits, the history of 
English georgics that treat of general agriculture, of gardens 
and of field sports, discussing also to some extent the didactics 
on these themes that occur in French and in Italian. 29 



29 My information concerning the subject in Spanish and German is 
casual, since I have excluded both literatures from the range of my study. 
I am not aware of any georgics in Spanish; and the type, except as it is 
developed in Thomson's Seasons, seems to have found little favor among 
German writers. For the influence of Thompson's Seasons on German 
literature, cp. K. Gjerset, Der Einfluss von James Thomson's " Jahres- 
zeiten " auf die deutsche Literatur des achzehnten Jahrhunderts. Heidel- 
berg, 1898. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 



9 



CHAPTEE II 



The Creation of the Geokgic Type 

1. Vergil's Georgics: Their Kelation to the Works and 
Days of Hesiod. 

The pastoral has come down to us from Theocritus, largely 
thru Vergil. The georgic, also, originated with the Greeks. 
Varro 1 names many writers among the Greeks who wrote of 
agriculture. Some, he says, treated the same subject in verse, 
as for example, Hesiod of Ascra, and Menecrates of Ephesus. 
The verses of Menecrates however, remain mere tradition. Of 
Meander's Georgics,, 2 there are left only fragments that in no 
way confirm the suggestion of Quintilian, 3 that Vergil followed 
him ; nor do any other critics point out that Vergil owes more 
to Meander than the borrowings from the Theriaca. A The 
georgic may be said to have originated with the Works and 
Days of Hesiod, but it has come down to us as a literary form 
thru Vergil, whose Georgics owe far less to Hesiod than his 
Eclogues owe to Theocritus. The Eclogues are little more than 
artificial copies, often mere translations, of Theocritus ; yet 
the world does not fail to acknowledge the charm with which 
Vergil has invested them as his own. Names as great as those 
of Horace, Milton, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Macaulay, are 
found in the list of their admirers ; but none the less, not only 
the literary conventions, but also much that is best in them, 

1 Varro on Farming. Translated by Lloyd Storr-Best, London, G-. Bell 
& Sons, 1912, p. 5. 

2 Nicander lived in the 2nd c. B. C. The fragments of his lost works 
are edited with a Latin translation by A. F. Didot, Poetae Bucolici et 
Didactici. Graece et Latine. Paris, 1862, p. 15 7 . 

3 Instit. Orat., x, 1, 56. 

4 Cp. T. E. Page, P Vergili Maronis Bucolica et Georgica, Macmillan and 
Co., 1910, notes on Georg. m, 425, 430, 513. 



10 



The Georgic 



Vergil owes to Theocritus. Even the landscape portrayed in 
them may sometimes be recognized as that of Sicily. 

Many influences were at work in the poems that Sellar de- 
clares to be ' almost the only specimens of didactic poetry that 
the world cares to read.' And there is much of Hesiod in Ver- 
gil ; but it is Vergil, not Hesiod, who created the literary form 
of the georgic. 

Some idea of the Works and Days may be had from the title 
page of Chapman's Translation, 5 " The Georgicks of Hesiod, 
by George Chapman: Translated elaborately out of the Greek. 
Containing Doctrine of Husbandrie, Morality and Piety, with 
a perpetual calendar of Good and Bad Daies ; Not Superstitious, 
but necessary (as far as natural causes compell) for all men 
to observe, and difference in following their affaires." More 
tersely, Aristophanes sums up the matter {The Frogs, 1033, 
translated by Hookham Frere) : 

Next came old Hesiod, teaching us husbandry, 
Ploughing, and sowing, and rural affairs, 
Eural economy, rural astronomy, 
Homely morality, labor and thrift. 

Hesiod does not purport to write a systematic treatise on 
agriculture. He begins by invoking the Muses, and continues 
with a personal address to Perses, his brother, who has wronged 
him, and seems in need of advice. Here ensues a moralization 
on strife; then the story of Pandora is told, in explanation of 
the necessity of toil, and of the difficulties of life. From this, 
arises an account of the Golden Age, and the evil days that 
followed thereafter. Perses is exhorted to justice and work, 
and is given various wise counsels. Then the poet cries, " Now 
if thy heart in thy breast is set on wealth, do thou thus and 
work one work upon another " ; an interesting introduction to 
what may be called the only purely georgic part of the Works 
and Days, for the labors that are to bring Perses wealth are the 
labors of the husbandman. Hesiod follows his exhortation by 

5 London, 1618. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 



11 



a series of desultory precepts concerning husbandry; when to 
plow and how to plow, what signs to follow, what evils to avoid. 
After this, he proceeds with advice concerning seafaring, the 
time to marry, the pouring of libations to the gods, and other 
miscellaneous matters. Then follows a calendar of lucky and 
unlucky days, and the poem concludes, " Therein happy and 
blessed is he, who knowing all these things, worketh his work, 
blameless before the deathless gods, reading omens and avoid- 
ing sin." 

From this sketch it may be seen that Hesiod's poem is not a 
carefully planned, artistically perfect structure. Even through 
the medium of a prose translation, 6 nevertheless, the work has 
a singular charm. In Chapman's couplets, much of this is 
inevitably lost; but in Professor Mair's prose, the freshness, 
the vigor of style, the personality of the poet, carry the reader 
back to earlier ages when philosophy walked in homely garb, 
and the world learned as yet little from libraries, much from 
life. Hesiod is counsellor, husbandman, and poet. Stories of 
gods and men he knows, superstitions, perhaps for all his scorn 
of women, old wives' tales. He has lived in the fields, has 
learned the signs that Nature has set for man to read, and he 
is at home with the winds and the stars. 

Vergil grew up among the woods and plains of Italy, a coun- 
try boy with a poet's soul, a poet's clear-sighted eyes, and finely 
attuned hearing. But he became conversant with the learning 
of his day. He absorbed the teaching of generations of poets 
and philosophers ; and at the beginning of his poetic career the 
glory of Lucretius was still new. He professes to sing the song 
of Hesiod, 7 and he builds upon the model of Lucretius. He 
enriches his poems with wisdom gleaned from writers on natu- 
ral history and astronomy, and makes them practical by sound 
precepts, drawn not only from his own experience, but from 
the tested writings of authorities such as the Carthaginian 
Mago, the Greeks Democritus and Xenophon, the Latins Cato 

6 Hesiod, translated by A. W. Mair, Oxford, 1908. 

7 Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen, Georg. n, 176. 



12 



The Georgic 



and Varro. And lie writes steeped in the inspiration of Lucre- 
tius. But the life that he depicts is the life that he knew, 
Italian life against a background of Italian landscape. In the 
making of his poems he reveals himself a reader of books, a 
lover of philosophy, but a greater lover of his native land; a 
good husbandman, and a wise giver of advice, but over and above 
everything a great poet. 

An account of the sources of the Georgics may be read in any 
important history of Roman literature, and in most of the de- 
tailed studies of Vergil's work. His indebtedness may be 
traced in detail, thru various scholarly editions of the Georgics. 
Sellar's book is particularly valuable with regard to the rela- 
tions between Vergil and Lucretius, and to the part that Maece- 
nas played in the composition of the poems. Maecenas probably 
had some influence in Vergil's choice of a subject peculiarly 
suited to the policy of the times, a policy begun with the ill- 
fated efforts of the Gracchi. Luxury and vice had inevitably 
followed in the wake of Roman conquest. Long civil wars had 
torn the country, and men loved the soldier's life of daring and 
adventure better than steady quiet, the routine of the farmer's 
toil. The city's lure was probably very much then what it is 
now. Moreover, during the long wars, there had been times 
when the regular government was almost suspended. ( Right 
had become wrong, and wrong right ; the fields lay waste, their 
cultivators being taken away, and the crooked scythes forged 
into swords' (Georg. i, 505-8). Only a revival of the ancient 
Roman principles could restore the ancient Roman greatness. 
A new theme was offered to the poet. i Others that in song 
might have held frivolous minds were now all grown common- 
place ' (Georg. in, 2-4). Vergil felt the inspiration, and so 
composed , the poems that were to celebrate the arts of peace, 
the glorification of honest toil, the praises of his' native land. 

Naturally, the didactic was the form selected for the poem. 
It has been suggested that Vergil was fired by a desire to be- 
come the Hesiod, 8 as he was already the Theocritus, of the 

8 Cp. Sellar, op. tit, p. 175. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 



13 



Romans. And in the Be Rerum Natura, Lucretius had shown 
the great possibilities of didactic poetry. With utmost reverence 
for the work of Lucretius, but with fine understanding of his 
own powers, Vergil gave himself to the writing of the Georgics, 
perfecting the meter that Lucretius had suggested to him, and 
adapting Lucretius' plan to his own needs. 

2. Subject Matter of the Georgics 

The Georgics are written in four books, each a complete poem, 
dealing, as the name implies, with a subject connected with 
agricultural pursuits. The first book treats of the preparation 
of the soil;, the second of planting, grafting and pruning; the 
third of cattle ; the fourth of bees. 

The subject matter of the poems may be analyzed as follows : 



Book I 

1-5. Address to Maecenas, announcing the subjects of the 
four poems. 

5-42. Address to the rural deities; Augustus eulogized, 
named as one of the gods. 
43-63. Of preparing soils; the time to sow; of winds and 
other variations of the weather. Products pecu- 
liar to different soils. Digression on foreign 
countries and their products. Allusion to the 
story of Deucalion. 
63-70. The time to plow. 
71-117. Of alternating crops; treatment of poor lands. 
117-159. Annoyances that harass the farmer, due to Father 
Jove's desire to strengthen men by teaching them 
the use of their powers. Of the Golden Age. 9 
Necessity of constant work, warfare and prayer. 

9 In his treatment of the Golden Age, Vergil partly follows Hesiod in 
accepting it as a former age, carefree and happy. But Hesiod regards the 
passing of the Golden Age as a punishment of the gods for the theft of 
Prometheus; just as the Biblical tradition makes the loss of Eden a 



14 



The Georgic 



160-175. Farm implements described. 

176-230. Precepts concerning precautions against various an- 
noyances ; the signs of a good season ; the prepara- 
tion of seeds; necessity for observation of the 
constellations. 

231-259. Episode of the five zones. 

259-275. Labors that may be done in wet weather; on holy 
days. 

276-286. Of favorable and unfavorable days. 

287-310. Winter relaxations and occupations. 

311-334. Of autumn tempests; a storm described. 

335-350. Tearing the elements, observe the skies, venerate the 

gods; offer the annual rites to Ceres; Ceres' 

rites 10 described. 
351-464. Weather signs; warnings of the sun and moon. 
465-497. Signs and omens attending Csesar's death. Horrors 

of the resulting civil war. 
498-514. Prayer to the gods to preserve Csesar to save a lost 

and ruined age, wherein the plow has none of its 

due honor, and mad Mars rages over all the globe. 



Book II 

1-8. Preceding subject stated; new subject announced. 
Bacchus invoked. 
9-90. Varieties of trees ; best method of cultivating differ- 
ent varieties. 

91-109. Great variety of vines; impossibility of naming all. 
110-135. Products peculiar to different regions; to foreign 
lands. 



punishment for the eating of the forbidden apple. Vergil's conception is 
nobler, his practical philosophy bears a curious analogy to the apostolic 
teaching of the strengthening power of tribulation. This may or may not 
be the core of Vergil's religious belief, but it is the most characteristic 
passage of the Georgics, emphasizing the central theme of the poem, — the 
necessity and the value of hardships and continual labor. 
10 The Ambarvalia. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 



15 



136-176. Panegyric of Italy, blessed above all other lands. 

177-258. Of soils; different qualities adapted to different pro- 
ducts; of testing soils. 

259-314. Methods and time of planting and pruning. 

315-345. Descriptive episode — of Spring. 

346-370. Further precepts concerning the care of vines and 
trees. 

371-379. Of protecting the vine from cattle, especially from 
the wild goat. 

380-396. Digression — of the sacrifice of the goat to Bacchus; 

rural feasts in Bacchus' honor. 
397-419. Of the husbandman's recurring labor. 
420-458. Gifts that earth supplies of herself, or in return for 

little care. Various uses of trees, gifts better 

than those of Bacchus. Allusion to the battle of 

the Centaurs. 

459-474. The blessings of country life contrasted with the 
troubled luxuries of cities. 

475-494. Prayer to the Muses — first, that the poet be granted 
to know the causes of things. This denied, the 
love of woods and streams and fields. He is blest 
who has cast aside superstition and the fear of 
death, but he is blest also who knows the rural 
gods. 

495-540. Continuation of the praise of country life; the life 

led by the Romans of old, whereby their country 

became the greatest of the earth. 
541-542. Conclusion, — But we have travelled over an immense 

space ; it is time to loosen the reeking necks of our 

steeds. 

Book III 

1-9. Subject stated, cattle and their guardian deities ; 
necessity of choosing a new theme. 
10-39. A future poem allegorically described. 
40-48. Meanwhile the subject requested by Maecenas (no 
light task), must be pursued. 



16 



The Georgic 



49-102. 



103-145. 
146-156. 
157-208. 
209-283. 
284-285. 

286-288. 

289-293. 



294-321. 
322-338. 



339-383. 

384-403. 
404-413. 

414-439. 
440-469. 

470-532. 



Of breeding cattle. (66-68, A mournful reflection 
interposed on the quick passing of the best in 
human life.) 

A chariot race described; of chariot racing. 

Of the gadfly; allusion to the story of Ino. 

Of training calves and colts. 

Ill effects of blind love on man and beast. 

But meanwhile time flies, as beguiled by love of the 
subject we linger upon each detail. 

Enough of flocks, the task remains to treat of woolly 
sheep and shaggy goats. 

The poet realizes the difficulty of his subject, but his 
cherished desire leads him to the neglected heights 
of Parnassus, where no poet has trodden before. 

The care of sheep and goats, especially in winter. 

A shepherd's summer day, from the first appearance 
of the morning star to the rising of cool Vesper 
and the dewy moon. 

Shepherd life in foreign lands, in the tropics and in 
the arctic regions. 

Precautions in the securing of wool; of milk. 

Advice not to neglect the care of dogs; the value 
of dogs as protectors and in the chase. 

The care of folds; pests that must be destroyed. 

Causes and signs of distress among sheep ; preven- 
tives and remedies. 

Frequency of plagues among cattle; description of 
a cattle plague. 



Book IV 



1-7. Subject announced ; " The divine gift of aerial 
honey." 
8-32. Of sites for hives. 
33-50. Of hives. 
51-66. Of hiving swarms. 

67-87. Battles among the bees; how to check such contests. 



The Creation of the Georgic Type 



17 



88-102. Of choosing the victorious leader , and the better 
subjects. 

103-115. Of plucking the King's wings to prevent battle; of 
inviting the bees with gardens. 

116-148. Were the work not so nearly ended the poet might 
sing of gardens, for he remembers the wonders 
wrought by a poor old man of Tarentum, with his 
garden and his hives; but prevented by limited 
space he must leave the task to others. 11 

149-218. Natural qualities and instincts of bees. Their com- 
munity life; their customs. 

219-227. Beliefs in pantheism and immortality held by some 
as a result of the intelligence observed in bees. 

228-250. Of collecting honey. 

251-280. Care of sick bees. 

281-558. Of recovering the loss of a whole stock of bees. Epi- 
sode of Aristaeus, whose bees were destroyed in 
punishment of his crime against Eurydice. 

559-566. Conclusion. Reference to composition of the Ec- 
logues. 

The foregoing outline may give some idea of the difficulties 
and of the possibilities of the georgic. For me to attempt a 
criticism of Vergil's work would be alike unnecessary and un- 
profitable ; the world has too long justified the truth of the 
poet's words (Georg. iv, 5-6) : 

in tenui labor; at tenuis non gloria, si quern 
numina laeva sinunt auditque vocatus Apollo. 

The arguments for and against didactic poetry need no re- 
petition. Even those most prejudiced can not deny Vergil's 
success. The heaviest charge brought against him is that he 
is not concerned to make his teachings practical, but that he 
uses homely details only as a foil to poetic situations and de- 

u " A graceful interpolation, sketching what might have been a fifth 
Georgic." — Conington, op. oit. 



18 



The Georgic 



scriptions. 12 There is testimony, however, that even Vergil's 
most prosaic teachings have been read with delight ; and Page 13 
notes a curious proof of the neglect of the valuable matter con- 
tained in the Georgics. According to the Encyclopaedia Bri- 
tannica/ 4 at the beginning of the eighteenth century the alter- 
nation of crops was just becoming a common practice in Eng- 
land, a great improvement upon the previous and common us- 
age of exhausting the land and then letting it recover its 
strength by lying fallow. In Georg. i, 7-83, this improved sys- 
tem had been recommended by Vergil eighteen centuries before. 

It is probably true that no peasant ever drew material pro- 
fit from the Georgics, and it is certainly true that Vergil's 
poems are not addressed to the uneducated. But a proof that the 
Georgics have been of influence in life as well as literature may 
be had from the statement of Pierre Larousse 15 that the lean- 
ing towards agriculture of the learned Italian scientific farmer, 
Pelippo Re, was decided by the reading of Vergil's Georgics. 



12 Cp. T. DeQuincey, "The Poetry of Pope," The Collected Writings, ed. 
D. Masson, Edinburgh, 1890, vol. xi, p. 91. 

13 Op. cit., Introd., xxxvn. 

14 S. v., Agriculture, c. 2, § i. 

15 Gramd. Diet. Univ. du XI Xe Siecle, T. 13. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



19 



CHAPTEK III 



The Relation of the Geoegic to the Pastoeae 
1. Distinction between the Georgic and the Pastoral 

The etymology of the term pastoral is a guide to the narrower 
meaning of the word, a meaning still given in the Century 
Dictionary, — " Pastoral, a poem describing the life and man- 
ners of shepherds." But pastoral is used also to characterize 
any literature that describes a simple rural life, such as Burns' 
Cotter s Saturday Night, or Walton's Compleat Angler, which 
Hazlitt 1 calls " the best pastoral in our language." 

Eclogue, 6 a selection/ and idyll, 6 a little picture,' or ' a little 
poem,' would seem broader in meaning than pastoral. But 
thruout English literature all three terms have been gener- 
ally used as synonyms ; hence the development of the incon- 
gruous types of so-called pastorals, and eclogues, and idylls, 
such for example as the pastoral elegy, the allegorical eclogue 
or pastoral, the piscatory eclogue, and the town eclogue. 2 Theo- 
critus' poems are named Idylls. But Cowley 3 in his essay 
Of Agriculture, writes, " Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but 
he was one of our tribe, for he wrote nothing but Pastorals)," 
altho as Mr. Kerlin says, half the idylls of Theocritus are 
not poems of rural life. 

Vergil, presumably, called his imitations of Theocritus Bu- 
colics, 4 ' and in Georg. iv, 565, he alludes to them as " camiina 
pastorum." According to Page, the grammarians probably 
gave them the name eclogues. The indiscriminate use as syno- 

1 W. Haalitt, " On John Buncle." The Round Table; a Collection of 
Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners, 3rd ed., London, 1841. 

2 Cf. R. T. Kerlin, Theocritus in Eng. Lit., Lynchburg, Va., 1910, App. 2, 
p. 181. 

3 A. Cowley, Essays and Other Prose Writings, ed. by Alfred B. Gough, 
Oxford, 1915, p. 141. 

4 Cf. Page, op. cit., Introd., x, n. 1 and n. 2. 



20 



The Georgic 



nyms of the four terms, Idyll, Bucolic, Eclogue, and Pastoral, 
seems therefore based on Roman authority, a fact which Mr. 
Kerlin fails to mention. Vergil's " carmina pastorwn " and his 
Georgics are usually edited together, either as Bucolics and 
Georgics, or as Eclogues and Georgics. This may be one reason 
why the pastoral and the georgic are still so frequently con- 
fused ; another reason may be due to the fact that the fashions 
of the pastoral, as of the georgic, owe so much to Vergil. 

Georgic 5 means literally * earth-work,' or 1 field-work/ hence 
a poem that treats of work in the fields, of husbandry, or more 
broadly, of rural occupations. According to Addison, 6 " the 
Georgic deals with rules of practice. A kind of poetry that 
addresses itself wholly to the imagination ; it is altogether con- 
versant among the fields and woods, and has the most delightful 
part of Nature for its province. It raises in our minds a pleas- 
ing variety of scenes and landscapes, while it teaches us, and 
makes the dryest of its precepts look like a description. A 
Georgic therefore is some part of the science of husbandry, put 
into a pleasing dress, and set off with all the beauties and em- 
bellishments of poetry." 

In noting that the georgic deals with rural occupations its 
agreement with the pastoral is seen at once. Both have the same 
background, and shepherd life may be depicted in both. In 
both one finds the element of delight in country life. But in 
Addison's definition the words " science " and " rules of prac- 
tice," strike at once a vital difference. The georgic, as Vergil 
planned it, purports to instruct scientifically by means of tech- 
nical terms and a use of practical details. The writer, speak- 
ing in the first person, recounts his experience for the reader's 
benefit, incidentally making use of various ornamental devices. 
The pastoral, as Theocritus and Vergil left the form, never 

5 Gk. 777, the earth, root epy of "epyo v work. It is interesting to note 
that altho Vergil goes to the Greeks for the names of his poems, he does 
not owe them either to Hesiod or Theocritus. Chapman called his trans- 
lation "The Georgicks of Hesiod," after Vergil. Vergil probably owes the 
name to Nicander. 

6 Op. ext. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 21 



assumes directly the purpose of instructing. It is most often 
dramatic in nature, and the characters are frequently repre- 
sented as speaking, or singing, often in dialogue. The shepherd 
of Vergil's pastoral does not suggest the idea of toil. Neither 
is he bowed under the weight of responsibility, troubled unduly 
by the doubtful blessing of ownership and family cares. He 
does not scruple to neglect his sheep for love of some scornful 
maid ; often he watches over the possessions of another, and he 
does not dare even to wager a fat lamb, if an inconvenient step- 
mother waits at home to take count of the returning flocks. 
He has his share of grievances, but his occupation is one wherein 
he may pass joyous and comparatively idle hours, in which, 
like Tityrus reclining under the shade of a spreading beech, he 
meditates the woodland muse on his slender reed. 

The pastoral themes are few, the singing match, the dirge, 
the love lay, the conventional forms fixed by Theocritus and 
imitated by Vergil, who " by including among his Bucolic pieces 
the famous 1 Pollib ' " 7 added thereto the panegyric, so marked 
a feature of the georgic, and with his " freer use " of the pas- 
toral disguise is accredited with having given rise to the pasto- 
ral allegory. But no matter what the theme, there is always 
in the setting of the poem an atmosphere of golden days, a re- 
moteness from the practical business of life. Daphnis is dead, 
but he " delights in restful peace," and his companions are 
happy in erecting an altar to him. Meliboeus is driven from 
his fatherland, a mournful exile, but his grief only serves to 
heighten the effect of the idle joys of the fortunate Tityrus, 
Tityrus who is allowed to remain piping under the beeches' 
shade. Shadows fall from the mountains as the sun declines, 
but of storm clouds and devastating rains one hears almost 
nothing. The tragedies, as well as the petty ills that mark the 
constant struggle of life, are left aside. The shepherd sings 

7 Cf . C. H. Herford, ed. of the Shepheards Calendar, London, Macmillan 
& Co., 1907, Introd., xxx. Herford does not note the fact that Vergil found 
both the panegyric and the Pollio motive of pastoral peace in Theocritus. 
Cp. Idylls, xvi and xvn. 



22 



The Georgic 



untroubled by the swift and cruel passing of time. What sor- 
rows he has are the SAveet sorrows of youth ; he experiences no 
foreshadowing of the weight of responsibility and the bitter 
coming of old age. And so, the pastoral that Vergil left as a 
model for future generations has come down to us signifying 
almost always the dream of Arcadian life. Little wonder that 
a frivolous queen and her short-sighted court should have for- 
gotten a starving peasantry while playing at the pastoral. 

True, there are pastorals of the conventional type that dwell 
more or less upon the petty ills of life; for example, in the 
eclogue of Severus Sanctus, De Mortibus Bourn, 8 two herds- 
men converse on the subject of a cattle plague; the evils of life 
seem largely responsible for the bitter tongues of Mantuan's 
shepherds ; Spenser not only satirizes the failings of church and 
state, but he shows the discomfort of the shepherd's life, draw- 
ing a bleak picture of " rancke Winter's rage." Thus the old 
Thenot rebukes the suffering Cuddie (" Februarie," 9-24) : 

Lewdly complainest thou, laesie ladde, 
Of Winters wracke for making thee sadde. 
From good to badd, and from badde to worse, 
From worse unto that is worst of all, 
And then returne to his former fall? 
Who will not suffer the stormy time, 
Where will he live tyll the lusty prime? 
Selfe have I worn out thrise threttie yeares, 
Some in much joy, many in many teares, 
Yet never complained of cold nor heate, 
Of Sommers flame, nor of Winters threat, 
Ne ever was to Fortune foeman, 
But gently took that ungently came; 
And ever my flocke was my chief care, 
Winter or Sommer they mought well fare. 

Thirsis, in Eclogue i, of Sabie's Pans Pipe, 9 complains of 
the death of a ewe, and the loss of a " tidie lamb " that the 
' Fox did eate,' while the shepherd slept under a thicket, Ty- 

8 Anthologia Latina, ed. A. Riese, Leipzig, 1906, II, 334. 

9 Reprinted by J. W. Bright and W. P. Mustard, Modern Philology, vn, 
433 ff., April, 1910. For Sabie's debt to Mantuan, see pp. 436 ff. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



23 



terns seeks to console him with proverbial wisdom, but Thirsis, 
paraphrasing Mantuan, bitterly replies: 

Good counsell Tyterus, but not so easily followed, 

Man is born in grief e, and grieueth at euery mishap. 

I think we shepheards take greatest paines of all others, 

Sustaine greatest losses, we be tryed with daylie labour, 

With colde in winter, with heat in summer oppressed, 

To manie harmes ■ our tender flockes, to manie diseases 

Our sheep are subject, the thief e praies ouer our heardlings, 

And worse then the thief, the Fox praies ouer our heardlings, 

Thus we poor heardsmen are pinched and plagu'd aboue other. 

But Spenser's Thenot finds time to discourse at length to the 
unhappie Cuddie, and ends by telling his willing listener a 
long fable ; Sabie's Thirsis, who refuses to be comforted by pro- 
verbial wisdom, allows himself to be kept awake^ and even 
diverted, by Tyterus' account of an " ancient love." And the 
great bulk of pastoral literature hardly touches upon the rugged 
ways of life ; it depicts the shepherd of Arcadia, whether Arca- 
dia be England, or Italy, or France. 

Repeating the first line of the Eclogues with a slight varia- 
tion, Yergil ends his fourth Georgic: 

illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat 
Parthenope, studiis florentem ignobilis oti, 
carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuventa, 
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi 10 

The traditional date of composition of the Eclogues is from 
42 to 37 b. c. According to Yergil's own words he was ' bold 
thru youth when he lightly made these songs of shepherds ' ; 11 
it is natural enough that they should be mainly concerned with 
love and happiness. The Georgics were composed later, between 
the years 37 and 30 b. c, when the poet was no longer bold, 
but courageous with the experience and wisdom of later years. 
If the phrase omnia vincit Amor 12 is characteristic of the 
eclogue, the phrase labor omnia vicit 13 is even more character- 

10 Eel. i. 1. Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi. ' 

11 Georg. iv, 565. 12 Eel. x, 69. 13 Georg. i, 145. 



24 



The Georgic 



istic of the georgic; for the georgic is concerned mostly with 
work, little with leisure, altho it depicts the farmer's life 
thru all seasons of the year. It shows glimpses of rural 
festivities, as in i, 299 if., n, 385 fL, n, 527 ff., and idyllically 
peaceful scenes that have the golden age quality of the pastoral, 
as in the closing passages of the second book. But thruout 
these scenes, upheld by a noble ideal, the poet writes in a far 
higher key than in the pastoral. Unlike the shepherd lad, the 
husbandman bears the responsibility of ownership, the weight 
of family cares. Tilling his soil, or in moments of enforced 
leisure, making ready the " arms " with which to conquer the 
difficulties in his way, he takes earnest thought how he may get 
the best from that which is his own, and provide for the family 
that depends upon him. He wastes no time lamenting scorned 
affection, nor does he spend words vaunting the beauty of his 
love. He rejoices calmly in the happiness of wedded life, — 
his sweet children hang on his neck, his ' chaste house keeps 
its purity.' 14 The greatness of Rome depends upon a virtuous 
family life, upon ' a youth enduring in labour, accustomed^to 
frugality.' 14a 

But while in the Georgics Vergil shows glimpses of a golden 
age and the gifts that Earth offers of herself, he never lets his 
reader quite forget the necessity of constant labor. And there 
is realism enough in the often quoted lines, in, 66-68, 

Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi 
prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus 
et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis, 

and in the account of the evils and dangers that threaten men 
daily, from the small annoyances of the insatiable goose and 
the Strymonian crane to the splendid fury of devasting 
storms. With respect to their treatment of rural life, Vergil's 
Bucolics are fittingly called Eclogues, i selections.' In the 
Georgics the poet attempts to deal broadly with the whole. 

With respect to its conventional form, the georgic may be 
analyzed as follows: 



14 Georg. n, 524. 



Georg. n, 472. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 25 



Subject matter: 
Central theme: 



Treatment : 



Chief features: 



A rural occupation. 

The glorification of labor ; the praise of 
simple country life in contrast with the 
troubled luxury of palaces. 

Didactic, with precepts varied by digres- 
sions arising from the theme, or related 
to the subject matter. 

Formal opening, a statement of the sub- 
4 ject: this followed by an invocation to 
the Muses or other guiding spirits. 

Address to the poet's patron. 

Panegyrics of great men. 

Mythological allusions. _ 

Eeferences to foreign lands, [their pro- 
ducts, climate, customs. 

Time marked by the position of the con- 
stellations. 

Proverbial sayings. 

Moralizations and philosophical reflections. 

Discussion of the Golden Age. 

Discussion of weather signs. 

Description of country pastimes. 

Descriptions of Nature. 

Love of peace;, horror of war. 

A lament over present day evils, which are 
contrasted with the virtues and glories 
of the past. 

Khapsody on the poet's native land. 

A long narrative episode, — in Vergil, the 
story of Aristaeus. 



26 



The Georgic 



2. The Pastoral, a literary type of frequent occurrence, 
made famous by great poets; the Georgic, a literary 
type coincidentally neglected. 

The " abundance of criticism " spent on the pastoral, and 
the coincident neglect of the georgic is easily explained; in 
part, by the frequent occurrence of the former type, the com- 
parative rarity of the latter; in part, by the great beauty of 
certain pastoral compositions, the tediousness of almost all 
georgic poetry. A type of poetry of frequent occurrence neces- 
sarily excites critical interest. If, at its first appearance, a 
literary product is justly condemned, criticism, like the unfor- 
tunate effort itself, is apt to die soon; but if for any reason 
worth considering a composition takes a strong hold on the 
public, tho only temporarily, it is assured a certain importance 
in literary history; and if a work may be rightly judged a 
classic, younger critics will constantly arise, inspired to discuss 
it from different points of view. A type of poetry, difficult in 
form, infrequent of occurrence, and seldom successful as litera- 
ture, naturally excites scant comment, and that rarely of a 
kind to beget new critical effort. 

Many poets, among them the greatest and the least, have 
written pastorals. It requires no especial courage to take up 
the oaten reed. The poet has little to lose by failure; if he 
succeed, he knows that the world will listen in spite of itself. 
But no great poet since Vergil has written a georgic, and 
comparatively few of the minor poets have attempted the task. 
Burns, who, as far as practical experience goes, was best fitted 
to appreciate a georgic, or to attempt to write one, declares 
upon reading " Dryden's Virgil " that he considers the Georgics 
" by far the best of Virgil," and that " this species of writing " 
has filled him with " a thousand fancies of emulation." 15 But 
when he compared his powers with Vergil's, his courage failed. 
Robert Anderson 16 expresses the opinion that to write a truly 

15 Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, May 4, 1778. 

16 British Poets, Vol. xi. Preface to Dodsley's " Agriculture." 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



27 



excellent georgic is one of the greatest efforts of the human 
mind. And the frequent attacks upon didactic poetry in gen- 
eral, upon georgic poetry in particular, indeed the occasional 
defenses of the georgic, emphasize the fact, that, to attempt 
this form of writing, one must have the courage that leads to 
an undertaking which promises almost certain defeat. 

In the period immediately following Vergil, the pastoral as 
a genre had apparently lost popular favor. Earlier than 
Calpurnius 17 there appear to have been no imitators of 
either Theocritus or Vergil whose work survived. 18 Of the 
writers following Calpurnius, only Nemesianus is named as 
worthy of any regard. Boccaccio, however, in a summary of 
the history of pastoral verse, includes both Calpurnius and 
Nemesianus in his contemptuous utterances concerning pastoral 
writers. He names ' the Syracusan Theocritus ' and ' Vergil, 
who wrote in Latin/ then adds : " Post hunc autem scripserunt 
et alii, sed ignobiles, de quibus nil curandum est, excepto inclyto 
Praeceptore meo Francisco Petrarca '\ 19 

Of the stream of pastoral poetry during the Middle Ages, 
Greg observes 20 that " though it nowhere actually disappears, it 
is reduced to the merest trickle." From the fourth to the tenth 
century, isolated examples occur that served to preserve the 
classical memory of the pastoral, reworked, however, with new 
meanings and new associations under the influence of Chris- 
tianity. 

With the fourteenth century, a new and brilliant epoch be- 
gins in the history of the pastoral. In the sixteenth century, 
Spenser found the genre " a literary mode that beyond all 
others lent itself to the expression of his complex emotions." 21 

17 Calpurnius' dates are uncertain. He is sometimes supposed to have 
lived at the end of the third century. For a clear discussion of the subject, 
cp. C. H. Keene, The Eclogues of Calpurnius and Nemesianus,~London, 1887. 

18 Cp. Conington on " The Later Bucolic Poets of Rome/' op. ext., Vol. 
i, p. 114. 

19 Lettere di G. Boccaccio, ed. Corrazini, p. 267. See Walter W. Greg, 
Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, London, 1906, p. 18. 

20 Op. cit., p. 18. 21 Herford, op. cit. Introd., p. xxvi. 



28 



The Georgic 



E. K. counts among Spenser's predecessors, Theocritus, Ver- 
gil, Mantuan, Boccaccio, Marot, Sannazaro, " and also divers 
other excellent both Italian and French poets, whose footing 
this author every where followeth." Spenser was the chief 
British influence in the popularizing of the conventional pas- 
toral; but the form occurs in British verse as early as the 
fifteenth century, in Henryson's Robin and Makene; and be- 
fore that the shepherd stories of the Bible had been made fa- 
miliar to English audiences in the vernacular drama, and in 
the liturgical plays of the Nativity. From Spenser's time on, 
the pastoral is found in England, as on the continent, in more 
or less closely related groups, and in varying types of varying 
worth. 

The georgic, a type of poetry that except in some of its 
eighteenth-century developments cannot be said ever to have 
made a truly popular appeal, is in its recurrences compara- 
tively rare. While Vergil was yet living, parts of his Georgics 
appear to have been parodied. 22 Gratius, who was contempo- 
rary with Vergil, wrote a treatise on hunting, evidently imi- 
tating the model of the Georgics. In the first century after 
Christ, Columella felt it a sacred duty to develop Vergil's sketch 
of gardens, Georg. iv. 116-148. In the second century, Op- 
pian of Cilicia wrote his so-called golden verses on the " Fisher- 
man's Art," the Halieutica, and somewhat later another Op- 
pian (of Apamea) wrote a poetic treatise on hunting, five 
books of which are extant. In the third century, Nemesianus 
composed a poem on hunting, more like the treatise of Gratius 
than that of Oppian of Apamea. In the fourth century, Pal- 
ladius, imitating Columella, wrote in elegiac verse, on the 
cultivation of trees ; (Bk. xiv of his Husbandry). How much 
poetry in imitation of the Vergilian didactics may have seen 
the light from the fourth to the thirteenth century, only to be 
buried sooner or later in obscurity, I cannot say. I know of 
nothing in the nature of a georgic during this period, except 

22 Cp. Addison : Essay on the Georgics. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



29 



the poem that Biese 23 calls " the much-read Hortulus," Walah- 
frid Strabo's Be Cultura Hortorum, " an idyll of the cloister 
garden/' written about 820. 

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there occur in 
France a number of treatises in verse on the noble arts of hunt- 
ing and hawking; 24 and a poetical treatise on fishing, entitled 
De Yetula, is said to have been written by Eichard de Fourni- 
val at this period. 25 In the fourteenth century, in Italy, 
Paganino Bonafede wrote some verse precepts on agriculture, 
entitled II Tesoro dei Rustici; 26 but no one seems to have con- 
sidered the effort worth publication. In the fifteenth century, 
very little is found ; Halliwell and Wright 27 print a Fragment 
of a Poem on Falconry, written in French at the beginning of 
the period. Dame Juliana Berner's verse treatise on " Ve- 
nerie " made part of the famous Boke of St. Albans, which 
appeared in 1486. To the year 1420, is referred the curious 
old English poem by Piers of Fulham, entitled " Vayne con- 
seytes of folysche love undyr colour of fyscheng and fowl- 
yng," 28 a composition less interesting as an attempt at an alle- 
gory than for its information concerning fish and fowl. Some- 
time in the period following Chaucer, an unknown English 
writer put the treatise of Palladius on Husbandry into Chau- 
cerian stanzas, with original prologues and epilogues, and occa- 
sional moralizations of his own; and one original English pro- 

23 A. Biese, The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle 
Ages and Modern Times, translated from the German. London, 1905, p. 61. 

24 Cp. E. Jullien, La Chasse. Son Histoire et sa Legislation. Paris. 
Aubertin, Hist, de la Langue et de la Lift. Francaises au Moyen Age 
d'apres les Travaux les plus recents. Paris, 1878, T. n, pp. 64 ff. 

25 See "The Angler's Library," The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 158, 1883, 
p. 160. The writer states that the Be Yetula was formerly attributed to 
Ovid. I have been unable to identify R. de Fournival. 

26 Cp. Tiraboschi, op. cit., T. V, n, 864. 

27 T. Wright and J. 0. Halliwell, Reliquae Antiquae, London, 1841. Vol. 
I, p. 310. 

28 Reprinted by W. C. Hazlitt, in Remains of the Early Popular poetry of 
England, Vol. n. London, 1866. For the date of the poem, see J. J. Man- 
ley, " Literature of Sea and River Fishing," Internat. Fisheries Exhibi- 
tion, 1833, The Fisheries Exhibition Literature, Vol. m, p. 563. 



/ 



30 The Georgic 

duction, georgic tho not Vergilian, belongs to the fifteenth 
century, a treatise in verse by " Mayster John Gardener " en- 
titled the Feate of Gardening. 29 In Italy, Poliziano's Eusticus 
appeared in 1483, a Latin poem still highly praised, which 
Dunlop 30 describes as " an abridgement of the Georgics." Be- 
fore 1500, Gioviano Pontano imitated certain features of the 
Georgics in his Urania, and in his didactic poem Meteora; and 
he produced a true Vergilian georgic in the De Hortis Hesper- 
idum. 

In the sixteenth century, the pastoral is a favorite type of 
poetry in Italy and France. With the publication of the Shep- 
h cards Calendar the genre in England enters upon a golden 
age. Until the end of the century the pastoral holds its vogue. 
Critics may scorn the type as they will, but they cannot disre- 
gard the instrument that Spenser and Ben Jonson and Shake- 
speare saw fit to adapt to their needs. The pastoral conven- 
tions lend themselves readily to affectations and artificialities, 
but they are forms in which the poet may express lyric joy and 
sorrow, romantic emotion, dramatic passion. The georgic, pri- 
marily didactic, purporting to treat of practical arts, offered 
little appeal to an age in which life seemed a great adventure. 
Representative Elizabethans seem to have found no possibili- 
ties in the Vergilian type of didactic poetry. So far as I have 
been able to discover, Thomas Tusser and Thomas Moffat are 
the only sixteenth-century Englishmen who regarded georgic 
precepts as matter fit for verse. In 1557, appeared Tusser's 
Hundreth Pointes of Goode Husbandry, later augmented to 
Five Hundred Pointes, a " profitable, and not unpleasant " 
georgic, which, however, owes nothing to the Vergilian conven- 
tions. Moffat's poem was not printed until 1599. Collier 31 
quotes the title page as follows, " The Silkewormes and Their 
Elies: Lively described in verse by T. M. a Countrie Farmar, 

29 Archaeologia, London, 1894. 

30 Op. tit, p. 138. 

31 J. P. Collier, A Bibliographical Account of the Rarest Boohs in the 
English Language. London, 1865, Vol. I, p. 539. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 31 



and an apprentice in Physicke. For the great benefit and en- 
riching of England. Printed at London by V. S. for Nicholas 
Ling, and are to be sold at his shop at the West End of Panles. 
1599. 4to., 41 leaves." Collier informs the reader that near 
the close of the first book, the poet mentions having been in 
Italy, adding in a marginal note that this was twenty years 
before he published his poem. Moffat's Italian visit is a simple 
explanation of this late sixteenth-centnry English georgic. The 
art of raising silkworms is among the favorite themes of 
Italian didactic poets, particularly in the sixteenth century. 32 

In France during this period a few treatises on hunting are 
found. 33 From Jullien's account they appear to be written 
more or less according to the model of the georgic. Among 
them is Claude Gauchet's Plaisir des Champs, an interesting 
poem in which pastoral love songs, descriptions of the chase, 
and georgic eclogues are mingled at the poet's fancy. 

In Italy, during the sixteenth century, so great was the ven- 
eration for the classics, that not only was the pastoral a favorite 
fashion, but the georgic too, for the first time in its history, 
received notable appreciation as a genre. The georgic themes, 
and the georgic plan are adapted to many subjects treated both 
in Latin and in Italian verse: didactics on general agriculture, 
as Luigi Alamanni's Coltivazione and Tansillo's Podere; on 
special branches of farming, as Pierio Valeriano's I)e Milacis 
Cultura, and the poems of Giustolo da Spoleto, Vida, and Te- 
sauro on silkworms; on rural sports, as Valvasone's Caccia; on 
seafaring, as Baldi's Nautica. In Tansillo's Balia noble ladies 
are exhorted to nurse their own children, and the same writer's 
Yendemmiatore, characterized by Greg 34 as " one of those ob- 
scene debauches of fancy which throw a lurid light on the lux- 
urious imagination of the age," may be considered as a bur- 
lesque of a noble georgic theme. 

33 Cp. the following list: Lodovico Lazzarelli, II Bombyx, 1493; P. Gius- 
tolo da Spoleto, De Sere, 1510: Girolamo Vida, Bombyces, 1527; Alessandro 
Tesauro, La Screide. 1585; Zaccaria Betti, II Baco da Seta, 1756. 

33 See Jullien, op. ext., ch. x and xi. 34 Op. ext., p. 32. 



32 



The Georgic 



In the seventeenth century, the golden age of pastoral is 
ended ; nevertheless, the genre persists, chiefly in the forms of 
the lyric and of the drama. John Donne and Herrick are 
found among English writers of pastoral lyrics ; Milton reaches 
the " high water mark of poetry " in Lycidas, and immortalizes 
the pastoral masque in Comus. The period furnishes little 
material for the history of the georgic. I know of nothing of 
the type in Italy, except EIcolo Partenio Giannettasio's Ha- 
lieutica, a work that I have been unable to see. In 1613, John 
\ Dennys' Secrets of Angling, a poem based manifestly, if not 
professedly, on the model of the Yergilian didactics, was pub- 
lished at London. 35 In 1665, Rene Rapin's Ht>rti was pub- 
lished at Paris. Dennys' Secrets probably set other English 
writers scribbling verses on the gentle craft. 36 Rapin's Horti 
may have incited Richard Richardson to write a Carmen de 
Cultu Hortorum, published at London, 1669. It is safe to say 
that if the seventeenth century begot many other georgics, they 
have either perished or become lost in obscurity. One must 
look to the eighteenth century for the culmination of the type. 

In the early years of the eighteenth century, a great deal is 
heard about the pastoral. English critics, influenced by the 
French views of Fontenelle and Rapin 37 are pleased to dis- 
course upon the true nature of pastoral poetry; English poets 
continue to write pastorals. The story of the Philips-Pope 
controversy is not a highly edifying chapter in the history of 
English literature, but because of it John Gay wrote the Shep- 
herd's Week. The pastorals of Pope and Philips are artificial 
specimens of the genre; and it is generally agreed that in the 
• eighteenth century the type is brought to be a thing of scorn. 

35 The date of composition of this poem is uncertain. John Dennys died 
in 16Q9. 

36 See, for example, Thomas Barker, Barker's Delight: or the Art of 
Angling, 1657 ; S. Ford, Piscatio, or Angling, a poem written originally in 
Latin, 1692, translated by Tipping Sylvester, 1732; The Innocent Epi- 
cure, or The Art of Angling, A Poem ( attributed to Nahum Tate ) , Lon- 
don, 1697. 

37 Cp. Greg. Op. cit., p. 415. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



33 



Yet, even among eighteenth-century pastorals there are found 
compositions of undeniable charm; in the Shepherd's Week, 
Gay proved himself truly a poet; Shenstone has nowhere so 
light and delicate a touch as in his Pastoral Ballad; and Allan 
Kamsay's Gentle Shepherd can still be read with delight. 

In 1697, Addison made his complaint about the critics' ne- 
glect of Vergil's Georgics* 8 Up to that time, unless Moffat's 
Silhwormes be excepted, no true English georgic of the Ver- 
gilian type seems to have appeared. John Gardener's verses 
are rudely made precepts ; Tussers's Husbandry though less rude 
is no more Vergilian than John Gardener's effort. John Den- 
nys wrote not of husbandry, but of angling, 39 and Dennys is 
not concerned with the pursuit of the sport as a means of sup- 
plying the larder, but rather with the exercise of gentlemanly 
virtues and gentlemanly skill. Dennys' seventeenth-century 
followers probably wrote in much the same vein. John Barker, 
to be sure, gives recipes in verse for the cooking of fish, but 
altho his verses are a shade more skilfull than those of John 
Gardener, his worst enemy could hardly have accused him of 
having tried to imitate Vergil. 

In 1700, there is found an angling poem, entitled The Gentle 
Recreation, or the Pleasures of Angling, a slight work, written 
rather pleasantly, by John Whitney, " a Lover of the Angle," 
and, from the testimony of his verses, a lover of Vergil. In 
1706, appeared the first English poem of any importance, in 
which a true georgic theme is treated in the manner and spirit 
of Vergil's Georgics, John Philips' Cyder. The influence of 
this didactic on English poetry of the eighteenth century was 
considerable. No one has ever suggested that it had any in- 
fluence on French and Italian poetry. Perry, 40 however, states 

38 Cp. above, p. 1. 

39 It is interesting to note, however, that in the Epitome of the Art of 
Husbandry, by I. B. Gent, London, 1669, there are " brief Experimental 
Directions for the right use of the Angle." See W. B. Daniel, Rural Sports, 
London, 1812. Supplement, p. 16. 

40 T. S. Perry, English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, N. Y., 
Harper and Brothers, 1883, p. 139. 

3 



34 



The Georgic 



that Cyder was much admired in Italy, and that it was trans- 
lated into Italian. In 1749, the Abbe Yart translated Philips' 
georgic into French. Whether or not it had been put into 
French before then, I am not able to say. 

It is hazardous to suggest that Italian interest in georgic 
poetry needed to be revived 'thru England's example. Yet the 
fashion of the georgic seems to have sprung into European favor 
along with the Anglomania manifested in the passion for 
English gardens. In Italy, as in France, I know of nothing in 
the nature of an eighteenth-century Vergilian didactic, previous 
to the publication of Thomson's Seasons in 1744. Philips' geor- 
gic may or may not have aroused interest in a type of poetry 
never before held in much favor by the French, and, apparently, 
neglected by the Italians for more than a hundred years. There 
is no doubt, however, of the great influence of Thomson on 
European poetry in general. It is well known that the Seasons 
were read, translated and imitated by almost all the civilized 
nations of Europe. Thomson has been called " the father of 
the landscape garden;" certainly he made nature poetry a 
literary fashion. Suddenly, thru him, the world-old course of 
the months and the seasons seemed to reveal to the poets sen- 
sations as enchantingly new as the emotions of love. The hus- 
bandman's life was to be sung once more as the ideal existence. 
Saint Lambert 41 writes thus: " La poesie champetre s'est en- 
richie dans ce siecle d'un genre qui a ete inconnu aux anciennes. 
.... Les Anglois et les Allemands ont cree le genre de la 
poesie descriptive; les anciens aimoient et chantoient la cam- 
pagne, nous admirons et -nous chantons la nature." Further 
on in his preliminary discourse, the poet speaks of his Saisons 
as georgics made for those who possess the fields, not for those 
who cultivate them. Other poets, imitating the Vergilian 
model, as Thomson adapts it to his use in the Seasons, give 
their efforts the sub-title " georgiques franqaises" 42 

41 Op. cit., p. xv. 

43 See, for example, J. Delille, L'Homme des Champs, ou Les Georgiques 
Francoises, cp. above, p5F. J. de Bernis, Les Quatre Saisons, ou Les Georgi- 
ques Francoises, first published, Paris, 1763 ) . 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



35 



To the influence of both Philips and Thomson the long list 
of eighteenth-century English imitations of the Georgics must 
be ascribed. Philips and Thomson were wise enough, or for- 
tunate enough, to choose a model that appealed strongly to Eng- 
lish poets of their day. Naturally, in a neo-classic age, Vergil 
was reverenced as a classic writer. A great poet, he had loved 
the outdoor world, and he had read into the heart of Nature. 
More than this, he had prayed the Muses to reveal to him the 
causes of things, and he had woven into his didactics something 
of the philosophic and scientific beliefs of the ancients. As a 
model, he made a strong appeal to the new school of poets, who 
yearned to sing in praise of country life; and he made an 
equally strong appeal to the eighteenth-century taste that de- 
lighted in attempts to poetize science and philosophy. Much 
of Vergil's teaching found sympathetic response in the eigh- 
teenth-century mind. His plan furnished opportunity for 
moralizing and philosophizing, and it offered the advantage of 
the introduction of narrative episodes. Thomson modified Ver- 
gil's plan at his pleasure. Other poets who imitated Thomson 
attempted also to imitate the Georgics in all their features. 
Thruout the century, georgics of various kinds are found. In 
France, one finds a comparatively long list of eighteenth-century 
didactics of the Vergilian type. In Italy, not only is the genre 
revived in a long series of new attempts, but sixteenth-century 
Italian georgics are brought into the light, read and reread as 
masterpieces of Italian genius. In England and France, as 
well as in Italy, it becomes the fashion not only to imitate 
Vergil, but to imitate old and new imitations of Vergil. Early 
Vergilian didactics appear in reprints and translations. 43 Al- 
most every variety of the georgic occurs, from treatises on gen- 
eral farm life like Vaniere's Praedmm Rusticum and Dodsley's 

43 One finds, for example, in the eighteenth century, French, English and 
Italian translations of Oppian's Cynegetica; English and Italian transla- 
tions of Oppian's Halieutica. From 1716 to 1781, Alamanni's Coltivazione 
was printed twenty times ; Tansillo's Podere and La Balia were printed for 
the first time in 1769, and La Balia was translated into English in 1798 as 
The Nurse, by William Roscommon. 



36 



The Georgic 



Agriculture to burlesques like Gay's Trivia, in which the Ver- 
gilian conventions are used in a poem treating of the art of 
walking London streets. The eighteenth-century vogue of the 
Vergilian type of didactic poetry is among the most interest- 
ing phenomena of an age pre-eminently interesting in the his- 
tory of literary developments. 

The pastoral, as has been seen, played a not unimportant 
part in the literary history of the early eighteenth century. In 
the nineteenth century, it remained for Shelley and Matthew 
Arnold to stir the world with the supreme beauty of their 
pastoral laments. True to classic traditions, Tennyson's 
Oenone wails in bitterness the unfaith of her royal shepherd. 
The English Idyls are reminiscent of the Syracusan poet. Pro- 
fessor Mustard thinks that ' the very title of these poems is 
meant to suggest their close relationship to the Idyls of The- 
ocritus '. 44 The traditions of the ages are not easily over- 
thrown. Even in the twentieth century, pastorals may still be 
found, poems of modern life, in a setting of rural beauty and 
outward peace, eternally old; but these poems fall under the 
broad definition of the pastoral, the conventional type seems 
at last to have become a dead fashion. 

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the georgic type 
still persists, examples occurring in French, in English, and 
in Italian. 45 T. Deyeux's Chassomanie, a didactic on the 
chase, appeared as late as 1844. However, even to scholars, 
most of these productions are generally unknown, and unless 
Deyeux's curious poem be excepted, it may be said that after 

44 W. P. Mustard in The Classical Weekly, vni, 166. For a complete dis- 
cussion of the relation of Tennyson to Theocritus, see W. P. Mustard, 
Classical Echoes in Tennyson, N. Y., The Macmillan Co., 1904, ch. iii. 

45 Among these specimens may be mentioned Delille's Homme des Champs, 
1800; J. E. Esmenard's Navigation, 1804; an anonymous poem on Fowling, 
1808; James Grahame's British Georgics, 1809; Thomas Pike Lathy's bold 
fraud, The Anglers, 1819; Mazzoni, op. cit., p. 78, names a list of Italian 
didactics, presumably of the Vergilian type, such as C. Arici's La coltiva- 
zione degli ulivi, 1805; Lorenzo Crico's La coltivazione del grano-turco, 
1812. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



37 



the first quarter of the nineteenth century the genre seems to 
have passed completely out of existence. The fate of the Ver- 
gilian didactic appears to be sealed, until in the twentieth cen- 
tury at least two remarkable developments of the type are 
found in the Primi Poemetti of Giovanni Pascoli, 46 and in Les 
Georgiques chretiennes of Francis Jammes ; 47 Pascoli's Poem- 
etti, idylls of country life that Miss Euth Shepherd 48 calls " a 
kind of modern Italian georgics, dealing under the same skies 
and against the same landscapes with the descendants of those 
who ploughed or kept bees in the Vergilian poems;" Jammes' 
Georgiques chretiennes •, religious idylls of the French hus- 
bandman, poems that Miss Amy Lowell describes as " a whole 
book dealing with the agricultural labors of a year ". 49 

3. Variations in the development of the Georgic compared 
with variations in the development of the Eclogue. 

The conventional pastoral occurs chiefly in the forms of the 
eclogue, the lyric, the pastoral romance, and the pastoral drama. 
The eclogue is, in itself, inherently lyric, and dramatic ;. and in 
it is found also the germ of romance. The evolution of the type 
comes about naturally, since evolution is the nature of living 
things. 

It has been seen that even in the hands of Vergil the pas- 
toral as a literary form shows development, for in Eclogue IV 
Vergil professedly uses the panegyric in a rural song, 50 and 
continually in his " carmina pastorum," he veils an undercur- 
rent of allusion, personal and political. From time to time, 
later writers continue to adapt the old conventions to new 

48 Bologna, Ditta Nicola Zanichelli, 1907. 

47 Paris, Mercure de France, 1914. 

48 See Miss Shepherd's article, " Giovanni Pascoli," in the North Am. 
Rev., July, 1916. 

49 Amy Lowell, Six French Poets, N. Y., Macmillan Co., 1915. 

Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus! 

Non omnes arbusta iuvant humilesque myricae; 

Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae. 



38 



The Georgic 



themes. As early as Calpurnius, a poem is found in which 
georgic subject matter is used in the eclogue form. Mycon, 
an older shepherd in Calpurnius' fifth Eclogue instructs his 
pupil, Canthus, concerning the management of sheep and goats. 
Eclogues I, IV and part of Eclogue VII are in praise of the 
Emperor. They are written in strains of adulation that sug- 
gest Vergil's address to Augustus in the first Georgic; but the 
theme of panegyric, as has been observed, is not new in the 
eclogue, and belongs equally to the conventions of the pastoral 
and of the georgic. In Eclogue VII, however, a new theme 
occurs. A shepherd, just returned from the town, recounts his 
experiences for the benefit of an untravelled friend. He con- 
trasts the life of the town with that of the country, a subject 
treated frequently, and with many variations, by later writers 
of the eclogue. 

In the middle ages, dating from the end of the fourth or the 
beginning of the fifth century, the old forms are adapted to 
Christian themes. The eclogue is used to celebrate the praises 
of the " saint cross," to prove the truth of the Bible stories, 
victorious over the falsehood of pagan myths, to voice allegori- 
cal religious laments, and to give honor 'to the saints. 51 

In the fourteenth century, Petrarch discovered the value of 
the pastoral machinery as a vehicle for veiled satire. Boccaccio 
uses the traditional pastoral material in the making of the first 
modern pastoral romance. 52 Mantuan uses it for direct satire, 
introducing the diatribe against woman, the contrast between 
town and city dwellers, the denunciation of clerical evils, the 
contrast between a virtuous past and a corrupt present. 53 San- 
nazaro, presumably imitating Idyll XXI of Theocritus, set a 

51 Cp. Greg, op. ext., p. 19 ; W. P. Mustard, " On the Pastoral Ancient and 
Modern," The Classical Weekly, March 27, 1915, p. 162. 

62 Sometime between the second and the sixth century, a Greek, called 
Longus, wrote the pastoral romance of Daphnis and Chloe. Greg thinks 
that this work played no part in the evolution of the earliest modern shep- 
herd romances. 

53 This and the contrast between town and city dwellers are also favorite 
georgic themes. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 39 

new fashion in the piscatory eclogue, in which he makes the 
speakers fishermen, instead of shepherds, the setting " pisca- 
tory," instead of pastoral. 

In the Comedia nuova pastorale of Giambattista Casalio of 
Faenza, a composition placed somewhat before 1538, Greg 54 
recognizes " what may almost be regarded as the first conscious 
attempt to write a pastoral play." There seems, however, to 
be no adequate treatment of the evolution of the pastoral 
drama. Greg's view is that " the theatrical tendency first ex- 
hibited itself in the mere recitation of a dialogue in character," 
the earliest example of these so-called ecloghe rappresentative 
being identical in form with those written merely for literary 
circulation. 55 As early as the tenth century, European audi- 
ences had become familiar with the shepherd figures of the 
religious dramas, and later with the shepherds of the medieval 
miracle plays. 56 However, it cannot be said that these pastoral 
traditions had any more influence on the evolution of the mod- 
ern pastoral drama than the romance of Daphnis and Chloe is 
said to have had on the modern pastoral romance. Neverthe- 
less, in the case of English literature one can grant that " the 
shepherd's plays of the religious cycles, the popular ballads, 
and a few of the Scots poets of the time of Henry son, all alike 
furnish verse which may be regarded as the index of the readi- 
ness of the popular mind to receive the introduction of a formal 
pastoral tradition." 57 

The most striking minor variations in the pastoral are due, 
presumably, to Sannazaro and the vogue of his piscatory 
eclogues. " Nautical " or " naval eclogues " are attempted in 

54 Op. tit., p. 172. 

35 See Greg, " On the Origin and Development of the Italian Pastoral 
Drama," op. ext., App. i, p. 429. 

56 In the Towneley Secunda Pastorum, the shepherds appear, complaining 
like Spenser's Cuddie, of the biting cold. They also enumerate in georgic 
fashion a list of the evils of their time. In the Chester Shepherd's Play, a 
remarkable passage is introduced, in which, in the manner of the georgic, 
the shepherds discuss the diseases of sheep, and their cures. . 

57 See Greg, op. tit. p. 417. 



40 



The Georgic 



which sailors speak, 58 " venatory eclogues/' songs of huntsmen, 
" vinitory eclogues/' songs of vine dressers ; " sea eclogues/' 
songs of Tritons and mermen ; and " mixed eclogues/' in which 
the speakers are a fisherman and a shepherd, or a woodman, 
fisher, and a swain." 59 

In the eighteenth century, the pastoral formulas are bur- 
lesqued in a series of town eclogues, 60 and further variations of 
the type are found in Gay's Quaker Eclogue, in Mrs. Barbauld's 
School Eclogue, and in Shenstone's Colemira, A Culinary 
Eclogue. 

The georgic, like the pastoral, is found in many variations. 
Vergil sings of tillage, of the culture of trees, of cattle, and of 
the " divine gift of aerial honey." The poet may take his 
choice of subject from any special branch of husbandry, and 
write a poem that answers to the definition of a georgic in the 
narrowest meaning of the word. Vergil, (Georg. ixi, 404-413), 
tells the farmer not to neglect the care of dogs, useful for pro- 
tection against thieves, and valuable in the chase. He remarks 
(Georg. iv, 116-148), that he would like to write at greater 
length of gardens; he infers (Georg. i, 456-457), that in the 
face of certain signs it will be useless to advise him to cross the 
deep ; Hesiod before him, in The Works and Days, had given 
advice concerning sea-faring. Vergil's suggestions seem to have 
offered the fatal fascination of themes " as yet unsung," — 
hence the long list of forgotten or neglected poems that follow 
more or less closely the didactic type perfected in the Georgics. 

The first important variation of the type is found in Gratius' 
adaptation of certain georgic features to the subject of the 
chase, the huntsman instead of the farmer being advised con- 

88 Cp. Kerlin, op. cit., p. 66. 

59 For the venatory variation cp. Petri Lotichii Secundi Solitariensis, 
Poemata quae exstant omnia, Dresdae, MDCCLXXIII. Eel. i and n. For 
examples of the other variations, cp. The Piscatory Eclogues of J-acopo 
Sannazaro, Ed. W. P. Mustard, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1914. 
Introd. pp. 21, 33, 42, 43, 48. 

60 See Kerlin, op. cit., pp. 59 ff. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



41 



cerning the implements and methods of his art. Corresponding 
to the venatory eclogue there occurs the " cynegetic," which may 
be styled a venatory georgic. Annibale Cruceio's AlconJ* 1 
usually attributed to Fracastoro, is an imitation of Calpurnius' 
My con that illustrates the crossing of the types of the venatory 
georgic and the venatory eclogue. Alcon, an old huntsman, in- 
structs a younger companion concerning the care of hunting 
dogs. The work is of especial interest in that it shows how 
closely the pastoral may be related to the georgic in a variation 
of both types. 

From the pursuit of creatures on the land to the pursuit of 
creatures on the deep, there is but a step. Vergil, (Georg. i, 
139-142), declares that at the end of the Golden Age men had 
begun to hunt and fish : 

turn laqueis captare feras et fallere visco 
inventum, et magnos canibus circumdare saltus; 
atque alius latum funda iam verberat amnem 
alta petens, pelagoque alius trahit umida Una. 

Oppian of Cilicia was probably familiar with the lines. At any 
rate, he wrote the Halieutica, a poem on deep-sea fishing that 
shows familiarity with Vergilian conventions. Later poets 
treat similar themes, showing more or less indebtedness to Ver- 
gil, rather than to Oppian. Corresponding to the piscatory 
variation of the pastoral there occurs the piscatory variation of 
the georgic. Hazlitt 62 calls The Compleat Angler " the best 
pastoral in our language," but The Compleat Angler may be 
said to be georgic as well as pastoral. John Whitney's Dialogue 
between Piscator and Cory don is an eclogue of mixed character, 
in which a fisherman and a shepherd discuss their respective 
pleasures and profits, are entertained by pastoral songs celebrat- 
ing country joys and virtues, and encourage each other with 
georgic reflections and moralizations. 

61 N. E.JLiemaire, Poetae Latini Hinores, Vol. I, p. 171. For a comment 
on the authorship of the poem see E. Carrara, " La Poesia Pastorale," 
Storia dei generi Letterari Italiani, Milan, p. 408. 

62 Op. ext. See above, p. 19. 



42 



The Georgic 



In the sixteenth century, Bernardino Baldi, inspired by the 
characteristic georgic desire to tread untrodden ways, wrote La 
Nautica, in which he uses the georgic conventions and the Ver- 
gilian plan in a versified treatise on sea-faring, 63 and thus pro- 
duced a nautical georgic corresponding to the nautical or naval 
eclogue. Thomas Kirchmayer, like the medieval writers of 
eclogues, adapted georgic themes to Christian teachings. In his 
Agricultura Sacra, man, the spiritual husbandman, is instructed 
in the care of the estate of his soul. 64 Fracastoro, who has fre- 
quently been compared to Vergil, used Vergil's framework in a 
poem entitled Syphilis, sive de Morbo Gallico. Tansillo, inter- 
ested also in physical welfare, undertook to sermonize in verse 
on the method of rearing high-born infants. 65 

In the seventeenth century, Rapin, in his Horti, (Bk. i, 11) 
suggests that some one write a medicinal georgic. Conington 66 
observes that before the time of Nemesianus, Serenus Sammon- 
icus had written 1115 hexameters entitled De Medicina Prae- 
cepta, but adds that this work " is not properly a didactic poem, 
but merely a medical treatise in metre." In the sixteenth cen- 
tury, Paola del Rosso wrote a didactic entitled La Fisica; but 
Ginguene describes it as an abridgement of Aristotle's book on 
physics, severely written, without digressions or ornaments. 
'No one seems to have fully carried out Rapin's suggestion. 
Collier 67 describes briefly a work written entirely in verse by 
Edmund Gayton, The Art of Longevity or a Diaeteticall Insti- 
tution. The work is in thirty-three chapters, treating of the 
wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of every kind of food ; as it 
was "printed by the Author," in 1659, four years after the 
appearance of Rapin's Horti, it may be that Gayton was en- 

63 B. Baldi, La Nautica con Introduzione e note di Gaetano Bonifacio, 
Citta di Castello, 1915. 

64 Cp. C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and 
Germany in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge, 1836, pp. 121 ff. 

65 L. Tansillo, " La Balia," L'Egloga e i Poemetti, con introduzione e note 
di Francesco Flamini, Napoli, 1893. 

66 Op. cit., p. 400. 

67 Op. cit., Vol. i, pp. 309-310. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 43 

couraged in his task by the suggestion of the French writer. 
In the eighteenth century, from the point of view of a physician 
and of a poet, John Armstrong wrote a treatise in blank verse 
on The Art of Preserving Health, a variation of the georgic that 
might have satisfied Rapin, had the English poet discoursed 
more on the use of medicines. 

Akenside, whose interest centered primarily in the workings 
of the mind, used the model furnished by Horace in the Epis- 
tles and by Vergil in the Georgies, to write a didactic entitled 
The Pleasures of the Imagination. In his preface, Akenside 
states that he has followed Horace and Yergil as models ; in his 
poem, he illustrates the use of many of the favorite georgic con- 
ventions. In the third book of the first edition of his poems, he 
imitates allegorically Vergil's instructions on soils. Writing of 
the wonder of God's gifts to man, Akenside discourses on Taste, 
telling how the early seeds of love and admiration are sown by 
the Creator in the minds of man, and how constant culture is 
necessary to rear these seeds to bloom; and as Vergil sang of 
differences in the character of soils, so Akenside sings of differ- 
ences in the character of the human mind. 

Gay's Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, 
published 1716, and Soame Jenyns' Art of Dancing, published 
1727, are interesting examples of the burlesque variation of the 
georgic. Both poems are mock heroics in which georgic conven- 
tions are adapted to situations in city life. The eighteenth cen- 
tury produced the town georgic as it produced the town eclogue. 
Writers of the latter are said to have had a model in Theocritus, 
Idyll xv. 68 The very name " town georgic " is in itself striking 
proof of the extent to which the Vergilian type of didactic 
poetry may wander from the scene of field-work. 

Falconer's Shipwreck, published 1762, is another example of 
the varying use of the georgic conventions, the poem being an 
epic with georgic features, such as technical instructions of a 
nautical character, moralizations, geographical excursions, ref- 

68 Cp. Kerlin, op. ext., p. 59. 



44 



The Georgic 



erences to famous men, the contrast of rural innocence with 
city arts. 

But by far the most important eighteenth century develop- 
ment of the type is that originated by James Thomson in the 
Seasons. Thomson omits the most difficult feature of the Geor- 
gics, the versifying of practical precepts, but he makes use of 
the georgic motives and of almost all the georgic conventions. 
Vergil proposes to teach the husbandman agricultural arts. He 
describes the occupations of the farmer thru the year, refer- 
ring incidentally to the seasons as they are related to the farm- 
er's occupations. Thomson proposes to give an account of the 
course of the seasons, referring incidentally to the farmer's occu- 
pations as they relate to the seasons. Vergil introduces descrip- 
tions of nature, chiefly as background for the husbandman at 
work. Thomson introduces the farmer and his work chiefly to 
give life to his descriptions of nature. Instead of using the 
formal Vergilian statement of the subject, Thomson begins each 
of his poems with an apostrophe to the Season he is about to de- 
scribe; his mythological references are rare, and he can hard]y 
be said to introduce pointed proverbial sayings. But if he re- 
frains from the use of proverbial sayings, he makes up by the 
length of his moralizations and of his philosophical reflections. 
He never attempts to convey practical advice directly, altho in 
Spring (137 ff.), after his description of the manner of destroy- 
ing orchard pests, he uses VergiTs personal tone in exhorting 
the swains to patience. All the other features familiar in the 
georgics he uses as freely as he uses Vergil's phrasing. In 
Spring, (142 ff.) and in Autumn (43 ff.) he introduces the cen- 
tral motive of the Georgics, the glorification of labor, but he 
does not use the motive as a central thought. Thruout the 
Seasons he sings the praise of simple country life; in Autumn, 
almost in Vergil's own words, he paints the existence of the hus- 
bandman, happy beyond the dreams of the great. 

Vergil suggests ; Thomson delights to expand. Vergil touches 
upon various philosophical beliefs; Thomson expounds eigh- 
teenth century philosophical ideas line upon line. In Vergil, 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 45 

every word seems necessary to the perfection of the whole ; 
Samuel Johnson is said to have pleased an unsuspecting audi- 
ence by reading a passage from Thomson in which he omitted 
every other line. Nevertheless, partly because of what he owes 
to Vergil, partly because much that he has to say is refreshing 
to jaded eighteenth century readers, chiefly because in spite of 
his faults he is a true poet, Thomson offered a variation of the 
georgic that found a welcome not only among the learned, but 
also among readers who had never construed a Latin line. The 
influence of Thomson is seen in English poems planned to imi- 
tate closely the Vergilian model ; but alongside of these didactics 
there are found in English, French, and Italian, imitations of 
the Vergilian model as Thomson adapted it to his use. 69 

Pascoli, in the Primi Poemetti, like Thomson in the Seasons, 
makes no pretence of giving his reader direct practical advice. 
But unlike Thomson, Pascoli introduces no learned allusions, no 
panegyrics, no geographical excursions, no narrative episodes, 
no sorrowful contrast between the past and the present. It is 
the Vergilian spirit, rather than the Vergilian motives, that one 
finds in Pascoli. Reading the Poemetti, one thinks inevitably 
of Millet ; only, too often, Millet fills one with a sense of sadness. 
The atmosphere of the Poemetti, unlike that in so much of Pas- 
coli, is of deep unreasoning Content. The Poemetti are a series 
of little pictures, idylls in which are depicted the homely reali- 
ties of the Italian contadini's daily life. To his listening help- 
mate the husbandman repeats proverbial wisdom, 

Sai die, per il grano, 
presto e talora, tardi e sempre male. 
. . . chi con l'acqua semina, raccoglie 
poi col paniere; e cuoce fare in vano 
piu che non fare. 



89 Among the most interesting of the English poems influenced by the 
Thomsonian variation of the georgic type are Goldsmith's Deserted Village, 
Cowper's Task, and William Bloomfield's The Farmer's Boy. Delille's 
Homme des Champs shows the influence of Goldsmith even more markedly 
than that of Thomson. N. G. Leonard's Le Village Detruit, is a weak copy 
of the Deserted Village. Mazzoni, op. cit., p. 79, mentions a nineteenth 



46 



The Georgic 



" Some mute star " looks down upon him as he plows ; and the 
young daughters of the house rising at dawn, perform accus- 
tomed tasks. Brown-haired Viola milks the cow ; golden-haired 
Rosa, like Vergil's housewife, sings to the sound of the weaving 
comb and at the command of the " car a pia madre " helps to 
prepare the simple meal. And when the Angelus rings, mother 
and daughters carry bread and wine to the fields where the 
sowers stand, like Millet's peasants, repeating the familiar 
prayer. 

With the loving minuteness of Vergil, Pascoli describes the 
contadims daily tasks. Like Vergil he charms the homeliest 
details into verse, and more perhaps than any other poet since 
Vergil, he writes with intimate understanding of the husband- 
man's life. With exquisite simplicity, more perhaps even 
than Vergil, he reveals the poetry of the peasants' religion, the 
nobility of simple tasks wrought with contentment, hallowed 
by the sacred beauty of family love. 

In Francis Jammes' Georgiques cliretiennes, there is still 
another development of the georgic type in which practical pre- 
cepts are omitted. However, a number of the conventional Ver- 
gilian features are illustrated, such for example, as the refer- 
ences to foreign lands, their products and customs ; descriptions 
of rural festivities and of rural sports ; the marking of the sea- 
sons by the constellations ; references to famous men ; a lament 
over the desertion of the soil ; and the use of narrative episodes. 
Les Georgiques chretiennes treat of agricultural labors, such as 
harvesting, and sowing, the culture of the vine; but the poet 
does not offer direct instructions as to the methods of farming. 
Like Pascoli's Poemetti, these georgics are idylls of the farmer's 
life ; like the Poemetti, they present a series of scenes in the life 
of one family. 70 Jammes makes an occasional mythological 
reference, but like Pascoli, he introduces no pagan religion. In 
the Poemetti, one hears the sound of the church bell, the sing- 
century Stagioni by Giuseppe Barbieri, and comments upon the European 
vogue of the Thomsonian nature poetry. 

70 In this respect, both series of poems are like Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



47 



ing of religious songs, the prayer of the Angelus ; in the pages of 
Jammes, " harvesting angels " guard the land no longer pro- 
tected by the deities of ancient Rome. The French poet invokes 
his angel (chant in, 48 ff*.), not the Muse ; he dedicates his 
third song to the " Mere cle Dieu " ; and he describes church 
feasts such as Christmas, Rogation Days, and All Souls'. He 
sighs over the desertion of the soil, as Yergil and so many other 
poets have sighed, but the present-day evils that he most deeply 
laments are those brought about by the irreligion of France. 

In spite of certain general resemblances to Pascoli's Poemetti, 
Les Georgiques chretiennes are very different from the Italian 
poems. In plan they are much nearer to the Yergilian type ; in 
spirit far less near to Yergil. As a development of the georgic 
type they are of especial interest ; as poems, they offer much 
that is worth while, but they fail to grip the heart with the deep 
and abiding beauty of the Poemetti of Pascoli. 

4. Variations of the Georgic classified. 

A didactic poem of the Yergilian type may illustrate only 
the use of the plan and general treatment of the Georgics, or it 
may illustrate only the spirit and the motives of the Georgics, 
and in plan be quite different from Vergil's didactics. A poem 
may be a georgic, Yergilian only with respect to subject matter ; 
it may be Yergilian in form and in subject have nothing in com- 
mon with the true georgic. The Yergilian conventions may be 
used to convey instructions about any practical art, they may be 
used to impart precepts about a science or a fine art ; they may 
be adapted to Christian themes and allegorical teachings ; they 
may be used for satire and burlesque, or in the telling of a tale. 
Georgic themes may be the subjects discoursed upon by the 
speakers in an eclogue ; thus the types cross. And finally, a 
poem that is georgic in motive or subject matter comes under 
the broad definition of the term pastoral. 

The chief variations in the development of the georgic type 
fall into two general classes, which may be sub-divided as 
follows : 



48 



The Georgic 



I. Poems marked primarily by the use of rules of practice. 

a. The georgic in the narrowest sense of the word, a compo- 
sition in which the poet treats of rules of practice concerning 
the science of general husbandry, or of any special branch of 
husbandry such as gardening, bee-keeping or the culture of 
silkworms. 

1. The non-Vergilian georgic, written like Hesiod's Works 
and Days, with no regard for definite plan or artistic structure ; 
for example, Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Pointes of Good 
Husbandrie, John Gardener's Feate of Gardening. 

2. The Vergilian georgic, in which the poet follows a defi- 
nite plan and makes more or less use of conventions peculiar to 
the Vergilian type; for example, Alammani's Coltivazione (of 
general husbandry), Rapin's Hortorum libri IV, Christopher 
Smart's Hop Garden, Ruccelai's Api, Vida's Bombyces. 

b. The cynegetic, the halieutic, or the ixeutic 71 (nearest in 
type to the true georgic) , a composition in which the poet treats 
of rules of practice not concerning field-work but field-sports, 
such as hunting with hounds (the cynegetic), deep sea-fishing 
or angling (the halieutic), and of hawking or the snaring of 
birds (the ixeutic). These efforts may be non-Vergilian in 
form (Dame Juliana Berner's Treatise on Venerie), or they 
may be written in imitation of the Georgics (William Somer- 
ville's Chase). The Oppian poems are among the most inter- 
esting examples of the cynegetic and the halieutic;. Claude 
Gauchet's " Le Moyen de Prendre les Alouettes au miroer " 72 
illustrates a sixteenth-century variation of the ixeutic. 72 

c. A composition in which the poet treats of rules of prac- 
tice concerning any outdoor occupation, as in the nautical 
georgic, a poem on the art of sea-faring; for example, Ber- 
nardino Baldi's Nautica, Joseph Esmenard's Navigation. 

71 The poems of this class will be treated in detail in a subsequent 
chapter. 

72 See Le Plaisir des Champs, Paris. Edition of 1604. 



The Relation of the Georgic to the Pastoral 



49 



d. A composition in which the poet gives direct advice con- 
cerning any practical art. The effort may be a non- Vergilian 
bit of rhyme, perhaps on some prosaic matter of the housewife's 
province, such as John Gay's Receipt for Stewing Veal. With 
notes by the author ; 73 or it may be a Yergilian didactic fol- 
lowing the georgic conventions, and emphasizing the necessity 
of honest toil and the advantages of country life ; for example, 
John Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health. 

e. A composition in which the poet follows the georgic con- 
ventions, purporting to give advice concerning any art or occu- 
pation; for example, Soame Jenyns' Art of Dancing, Gay's 
mock-heroic Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of 
London. 

f. An eclogue in which the characters are concerned with 
rules of practice ; as in Calpurnius' My con, John Scott's Amoe- 
bean Eclogue, " Rural Business; or the Agriculturists." 74 

II. Poems illustrating georgic themes or georgic features, but 
not marked primarily by the use of rules of practice. 

a. A composition that treats of rural life, following in part 
georgic ideas and georgic conventions, altho not dealing pri- 
marily with an occupation; as, for example, Thomson's Seasons. 

b. A composition in which practical precepts are not used, 
altho the poet treats in the Vergilian spirit of farm occupations 
and uses to some extent georgic features; as in Bloomfield's 
Farmer s Boy, Pascoli's Primi Poemetti, and Jammes' Geor- 
giques chretiennes. 

c. A composition in which, for allegorical or philosophical 
purposes, the Vergilian plan is imitated, wholly or in part, 
altho the poet does not treat of a practical occupation and is 
not concerned primarily with country life ; as in Thomas Kirch- 

* 3 See Chalmer's English Poets, x, 495. 
M See Chalmer's English Potes, xvn, 469. 

4 



50 



The Georgic 



meyer's Agriculture Sacra, and Akenside's Pleasures of the 
Imagination. 

d. An eclogue in which the characters discourse on georgic 
themes; for example, John Whitney's Dialogue between Pis- 
cator and Corydon, Claude Gauchet's " Michaut-Phlippot." 75 

e. A narrative poem with digressions of georgic character; 
as in Falconer's Shipwreck. 



n See Le Plaisir dea Champa, Paris, 1869, p. S6. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



51 



CHAPTEE IV 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 1 
1. Early Italian Poems on Agriculture 

Didactic poems on general agriculture may be considered in 
several groups : the earliest Italian works on the subject, early 
English non-Vergilian georgics, sixteenth-century Italian poems, 
and works in French and English written in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries. 

Except, perhaps, in the first years of the eighteenth century, 
the didactic type of Vergilian poetry seems to have appealed 
more strongly to the Italians than to any other people. With 
them begins fitly enough the revival of the georgic on general 
agriculture. In 1483 Poliziano's Busticus was written as an 
introduction to the study of Vergil's Georgics. Dunlop 2 rightly 
characterizes the Rusticus as an " abridgment of the subject 
matter of the Georgics/' Yet the poem is far more than this, 
for altho Poliziano does not follow Vergil's plan, and does not 
treat of rules of practice in the fashion of either Vergil or of 
Hesiod, the Rusticus is one of the finest of the Vergilian imita- 
tions ; a poem that convinces the reader that the theme of farm 
life can be an inspiration to poets of all ages, since in the late 
fifteenth century it can be treated in verses of almost as great 
loveliness as those of the Mantuan himself. 

1 The compositions which are purely georgic, either in subject matter 
alone, or both in subject matter and in plan, fall naturally into several 
different groups which may be classed as follows : ( a ) didactics on general 
farming, (ib) didactics on gardens, (c) didactics on silkworms, (d) didac- 
tics on sheepraislng, (e) didactics on miscellaneous agricultural subjects. 
I shall attempt to treat in detail only the poems of the first two groups. 

For the chief poems on silkworms see above, p. 31. J. Dyer's The Fleece 
(on sheep-raising), one of the finest of English georgics, has been cele- 
brated in Wordsworth's sonnet To The Poet John Dyer. J. Grainger's 
The Sugar Cane, C. Smart's The Hop Garden, J.-B. Spolverini's Colt, del 
Riso, G. Roberti's Le Fragole are interesting examples of subjects, georgic 
in the narrowest sense of the word. 

a See above, p. 30. 



52 



The G&orgic 



Poliziano's Latin poem was due directly to the inspiration 
of Yergil. But long before Poliziano, another Italian writer, 
the source of whose inspiration I do not know, attempted to 
make verses on agriculture. This was the Bolognese Paganino 
Bonafede 3 who in the Tesoro dei Rustici began " that kind of 
Georgic poetry which was fully developed later by Alamanni 
in his Coltivazione, by Giralomo Barrufaldi in the Canapajo 
etc." 4 This was as early as 1360, according to Tiraboschi 5 
who adds that II Quadrio speaks of a manuscript copy that the 
canon Amadei had of the Tesoro. Tiraboschi disposes of the 
subject by remarking of Bonafede that " il saggio che egli ne 
da, e si poco felice che a niuno, io credo, cadera mai in pensiero 
di pubblicarlo." In how far the ill-fated effort is Vergilian I 
am at present unable to determine. Bonafede's work, appar- 
ently, had no influence on other Italian writers. Poliziano, 
however, may be regarded as a powerful force in awakening 
directly or indirectly the enthusiasm for Vergil's Georgics that 
resulted in the remarkable series of didactic poems written in 
Italy thruout the sixteenth century. 



2. Early English nonrVergilian Georgics 

The first English poem on the subject of farming is not 
original. It is the Middle English version of Palladius on 
Husbandrie, 6 most of which is said to be a fairly close transla- 

3 See above, p. 29. 

* See Hermann Oelsner, " On Ital. Lit.," E. B., vol. xiv. 

5 Op. cit. See above, p. 29. 

6 This translation was first printed for the E.E.T.S. No. 52, ed. from the 
Unique MS. of about 1420 A. D. In Colchester Castle. By the Rev. Barton 
Lodge,, M. A., with a ryme index ed. by Sidney J. Herrtage, B. A. London, 
1873 and 1879. I have been unalble to see the later edition by Mark Liddell, 
The Middle English Translation of Palladius de re rustica, ed. with critical 
and explanatory notes. Pt. I— Text. Berlin, E. Ebering, 1896. See the 
review in Anglia Beibl., vn, 97. Gustav Korting, Grundr. der Gesch. der 
Eng. Lit., p. 153, n. 1, cites the title of a promising Gottingen dissertation, 
Streuver, Die mitteleng. t)~bersetzung des P., ihr Verhdltnis zur Quelle und 
ihre Sprache. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



53 



tion of the Latin author. 7 The version of the Early English 
Text Society, edited from the Colchester manuscript, is not 
complete. Mark Liddell edited the translation from the manu- 
script of Earl Fitzwilliam, which was unknown to Lodge and 
Herrtage, and which is believed to have been copied from the 
original. Several gaps in the Colchester manuscript are here 
filled in, and to the first book there is a prologue of one hundred 
and twenty-eight verses, in which the translation is said to have 
been made at the command and under the supervision of Duke 
Humphrey of Gloucester. How much more of the history of 
the Middle English translator may be had from the Eitzwilliam 
manuscript I do not know. His name seems not to have been 
mentioned anywhere; Herrtage states that it is conjectured that 
he was a member of one of the religious houses of Colchester, 
or in the vicinity, a conjecture founded on the facts that gar- 
dening was a favorite pursuit of these houses, and that Palladius 
was held in repute among them. In the Colchester manuscript 
the personal interpolations of the translator throw no light on 
his identity, but they show that he was a devoutly religious man 
who dedicated his work to the Christian God. The correctness 
of his translation, says Herrtage, is a proof of his learning, and 
the general character of his verse bespeaks " literary taste as 
well as leisure." The verse is written in rime royal, indicating 
the writer's knowledge and admiration of Chaucer. 

The poem in the Colchester ms, is in twelve books. The first, 
an introduction of one hundred and sixty-eight stanzas, gives 

7 Lodge remarks that little is known of Palladius. He lived in the fourth 
century A. D., in the time of Theodosius. His works obtained some celebrity 
and were translated into the vernacular Of almost every country of Europe. 
" Palladius' work . . . was the foundation of nearly all English writings 
on husbandry for several centuries, and most of them, that of Grosseteste 
included, were merely translations or adaptations of that work" (The Hon. 
Mrs. Evelyn Cecil, A Hist, of Eng. Gardening. London, 1910, p. 59). The 
first acknowledged English translation of Palladius seems to be the poem 
of the unknown author of the Colchester MS. The name and work of 
Nicholas Bollard, a monk of Westminster, another translator of the same 
period, have been preserved, but this version includes only the parts relat- 
ing to grafting, planting, and sowing. See Mrs. Cecil, op. tit., p. 62, 



54 



The Gsorgic 



a variety of general precepts on tillage, pasturage, the best 
methods of building, the care of domestic fowls, the necessity 
of good air and water, even the best articles of dress for rustics. 
The other eleven books give advice for each month of the year, 
except December, treating of almost every known farm occupa- 
tion, from plowing to preserving; and detailing, often with 
pleasant laughter, curious superstitions relative to agriculture. 
Palladius evidently had no care for an artistic plan, and he 
scorns tlje aid of rhetoric. The opening stanza reads : 

Consideraunce is taken atte prudence 
What mon me moo&t enforine: and husbondrie 
No rethorick doo teche or eloquence; 
As sum have doon hemself to magnifie. 
What com thereof ? That wyse men f olie 
Her wordes helde. Yit other thus to blame 
We styntte, in cas men doo by us the same. 

Gesner, comments Mr. Lodge, 8 on line 4, considers this to be 
a taunt aimed at Columella, altho Columella gives no more occa- 
sion for it than Palladius himself ; and the latter by his remark 
in the last lines, seems to be conscious that he is open to this 
retort. It appears more reasonable to infer that Palladius had 
reference to Vergil ; and the neglect of Vergil's sound precepts, 
already referred to, seems to some extent to justify the question, 

What com thereof? That wyse men folie 
Her wordes held. 

The second stanza, a statement of the general subjects to be 
treated, recalls the stock opening of the Vergilian didactic, but 
except an occasional moralization, there is nothing further to 
suggest the conventions of the georgic. The Middle English 
translator's style has the simplicity of his age, and his precepts 
are far pleasanter to read than many eighteenth-century epi- 
sodes. It would seem that his Muse did not resent the fact that 
she was scorned. Read continuously, the book is a labor ; read 
by bits, it is, occasionally, delightful. Stanzas like the follow- 
ing, the epilogue to Bk. vi and prologue to Bk. vn, make the 



8 Op. ext., p. 221. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



55 



reader regret that the translator reveals so little of his own 
personality : 

So May is r crane away in litel space, 

The tonge is shorte, and longe is his sentence, 

Forth ride I see my Gide, and him I trace 

As he as swyfte to be yit I dispenee. 

sone of God alloone, sapience, 

hope, of synnes drop or gile immuyn, 

Loving I to The syng as my science 

Can doo; and forth I goo to werk atte Juyn. 

The Middle English Palladius plays no important part in 
the history of the georgic, for the world knew nothing of the 
" unique manuscript " until its discovery at Colchester Castle, 
when it was published, not for its value as a georgic, but as a 
piece of literature illustrating the transitional state of the lan- 
guage shortly after the time of Chaucer. 

Thomas Tusser's A Hundredth Pointes of Good Husbandries 
afterwards expanded to Five Hundred Pointes of Good Hus- 
bandries is the first original English georgic on general 
agriculture of which I have any knowledge. Excepting John 
Gardener's verses 10 it is, as far as I know, the earliest English 
georgic. Tusser professes to imitate no one; yet, with reason, 
his poem has been compared to the Works and Days. Coning- 
ton, 11 writing of eighteenth-century didactics, says: "What- 
ever may be their beauties, the Hesiodic spirit is absent from 
one and all alike. If we are resolved to trace it to its lurking- 
places in English poetry we must ascend to times more nearly 
resembling Hesiod's own, when old Tusser could write not for 
critics, but for farmers, and the Five Hundred Pointes of Good 
Husbandrie were received as respectable poetry because they 
were known to be good sense." 

Tusser's title-page is, like that of Chapman's Hesiod, a fair 
summary of the poem's contents : " Five Hundred Pointes of 
good Husbandrie, as well for the Champion, or open countrie 

9 Eng. Dialect Society Pull. No. 21, 1878, ed. by W. Payne and Sidney 
J. Herrtage. 

10 See above, p. 30. u Op. cit., p. 134. 



56 



The Georgic 



as also for the woodland, or several, mixed in every Month with 
Huswiferie, over and besides the booke of Huswiferie corrected, 
better ordered, and newly augmented to a fourth part more, 
with divers other lessons, as a diet for the former, of the proper- 
ties of winds, planets, hops, herbes, bees, and approved remedies 
of sheepe and cattle, with many other matters both profitable, 
and not unpleasant for the Reader. Also a table of husbandrie 
at the beginning of this booke: and another of huswiferie at 
the end; for the better and easier finding of any matter con- 
tained in the same. 

" Newly set forth by Thomas Tusser, Gentleman, Servant 
of the Honorable Lord Paget of Beaudesert. Imprinted at 
London, by Henrie Denham, dwelling in Paternoster Row, at 
the Signe of the Starre, 1580." 

These varied matters, " profitable and not unpleasant," are 
set forth mainly in anapestic meter, 12 rough but well adapted 
for retention in the memory. Like the English Palladius, 
Tusser follows no definite artistic plan. The work is divided 
into one hundred and fourteen sections, or poems; each is 
complete in itself, and some have no relation to the subject of 
husbandry. 

War ton 13 writes of the Five Hundred Poirdes, " It must be 
acknowledged that this old English georgic has much more of 
the simplicity of Hesiod, than of the elegance of Virgil: and 
a modern reader would suspect, that many of its salutary 
maxims originally decorated the margins, and illustrated the 
calendars of an antient almanac. It is without invocations, 
digressions and descriptions: no pleasing pictures of rural 
imagery are drawn from meadows covered with flocks and fields 
waving with corn, nor are Pan and Ceres once named. Yet it 
is valuable as a genuine picture of the agriculture, the rural 
arts, and the domestic economy and customs, of our industrious 

12 For a brief but interesting discussion of Tusser's Versification, cp- 
E. D. So. 21, xx, xxi. See also Schipper, Grundr. der Engl. Metrik, 
Leipzig, 1895, pp. 108, 249. 

13 The Hist, of Eng. Poetry, London, 1824, vol. IV, p. 129. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 57 

ancestors." Warton is right about the absence of invocations 
and descriptions; but the poem illustrates the Vergilian con- 
vention of an address to the writer's patron, in " the Author's 
Epistle to the Late Lord William Paget " and in the eulogistic 
]ines to " the Eight Honorable and my Speciall good Lord and 
Master, the Lord Thomas Paget of Beaudesert, son and heire 
to his late father deceased." It is not true that Ceres is not 
once named, for Tusser shows his acquaintance with mythology 
in the lines to Lord Thomas Paget, 

But God hath wrought his pleasure, 
and blest him out of measure, 
with heaven and earthlie treasure, 
so good a God is he. 

His counsell had I used, 
and Ceres art refused 
I need not thus have mused 
nor drooped as I now do. 

And again, 

Though Pallas hath denide me, 
hir learned men to guide me, 
for that she dailie spide me, 
with countrie how I stood: 

Yet Geres so did bold me, 
with hir good lessons told me, 
that rudeness cannot hold me, 
from doing country good. 

The theme of contrast between city and country is treated 
without illusion : 

For citie seems a wringer, 
the penie for to finger, 
from such as there do linger, 

or for their pleasure lie: 
Though countrie be more painfull, 
and not so greedie gainfull, 
yet it is not so vainfull, 

in following fansies eie. 14 

The pastime feature of the georgic is illustrated very happily, 
particularly in the verses on Christmas festivities. There are 



14 Chap. 2, st. 13, p. 10. 



58 



The Ceorgic 



no long episodes nor tales of any kind, but brief digressions 
occur such as the description of man's age from seven years to 
fourscore and four, the " description of an envious and naughtie 
neighbour, and a dialogue between two Bachelers of wiving and 
thriving, by ' affirmation and negation/ and the maryed man's 
judgment thereof." Chap. 30 consists of A Christmas Car oil 
of the birth of Christ upon the tune of King Salomon. But the 
most characteristic feature of the whole poem is the use of 
pointed and practical maxims, such as 

Let house have to -fill her, 

Let land have to till her, 
No dwellers, what profiteth house for to stand? 
What goodness, unoccupied, bringeth the land? 

and 

No labor, no bread, 
No host we be dead, 15 

and so forth. 

Like Palladius, Tusser scorns the aid of rhetoric ; he writes : 

What looke ye, I praie you shew what? 
Termes painted with Rhetorike fine 
Good husbandrie asketh not that, 
Nor ist any meaning of mine. 16 

Tusser's writings, like those of the translator of Palladius, 
show that he was a devout Christian. In one section, he names 
the " principal points of Eeligion " ; in another he sums up in 
twenty-seven quatrains his " stedfast creede." 17 That his 
religious, as well as his agricultural, precepts are practical may 
be seen from the lines, 

I do not doubt there is a multitude of saints. 

'More good is done resembling them than shewing them our plaintes. 
Their faith and workes in Christ that glorie them did give, 
Which glorie we shall likewise have, if we do likewise live. 1 * 

Like the translator of the Palladius, Tusser is pleased to 
translate Latin. He has some lessons " out of S. Augustine 99 

15 Chap. 6, p. 15. 16 Chap. 5, st. 3, p. 14. 

17 H 105, pp. 193-194; If 106, pp. 194 ff. 

18 U 106, st. 21, p. 198. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



59 



(pp. 200-201), and in f 111, he gives " Eight of St. Barnard's 
Verses, both in Latin and English " ; but, unlike the Middle 
English writer, he devotes a part of his poem to setting forth 
the main facts of his life. 19 

Altho Tusser's poem did not share the fate of Palladius on 
Husbandrie, but was read and reread, 20 and probably learned 
by heart, it has no definite interrelations with other georgics; 
it stands quite apart, an apparently unique achievement in 
English literature. 

3. Sixteenth-Century Italian Poems on Agriculture 

Luigi Alamanni's Coltivazione 21 is the earliest Vergilian 
georgic on agriculture discussed by the critics. Alamanni him- 
self boasts of having been the first to follow in the footsteps of 
Vergil and of Hesiod. 22 Apparently he ignores such works as 

19 If 113, p. 205, a division added to the edition of 1573. 

20 From 1557 to the end of the sixteenth century, Tusser's Hushandrie 
passed thru at least thirteen editions. " Yet all are scarce, and few 
of them surviving are perfect: a proof that what was intended for prac- 
tical use had been sedulously applied to that purpose. ' Some books,' 
says Mr. Hazlewood in the British Bibliographer No. in, ' become heirlooms 
from value; and Tusser's work, for useful information in every department 
of agriculture, together with its quaint and amusing observations, perhaps 
passed the copies from father to son, till they crumbled away in the bare 
shifting of the pages and the mouldering relic only lost in value by the 
casual mutilation of time.' " E. D. S., 21, Introd., xxii ff. For a catalog of 
the editions of Tusser from 1557-1744 see The Five Hundred Points, ed. 
W. Mavor, London, 1812, Preliminary Dissertation, pp. 17 ff. 

21 For a list of the editions of La Colt, see Hauvette, op. cit. App. iv, pp. 
555-6. 

22 Colt., I, 32-37, the poet addressing Francis I prays for aid: 

Ch' io possa racoontar del pio Villano 
L'arte, l'opre, gl'ingegni, e le stagione: 
Che dovreste saper per pruova omai, 
Che dal favor di voi, non d'altri, puote 
Nascer virtu, che per le Tosche rive 
Or mi faccia seguir con degno piede 
II chiaro Mantovan, l'antico Ascreo, 
E mostrar il camin che ascoso giace. 



60 



The Georgic 



Poliziano's Rusticus, Pontano's De Hortis Hesperidum, Vida's 
Bombyces, and Rucellai's Api. But Poliziano, Pontano, and 
Vida wrote in Latin, and it is the theme of cultivation in gen- 
eral, not precepts concerning bees, that Alamanni proudly 
claims to have reintroduced to Italian poetry. Since Bonafede's 
precepts had never been published, one may reasonably conclude 
that the Tesoro dei Rustici was unknown to Alamanni. 

La Coltivazione was not published until 1546. Hauvette 23 
observes, however, that from the end of the year 1539 Alamanni 
had conceived the idea of writing a poem on field work. 24 The 
idea was undoubtedly suggested by Vergil, but possibly Rucel- 
lai's imitation of the Bees had something to do with it. The 
Tuscan poet's exile in France, his observation of the peasant 
life of a foreign country, probably aroused his interest in agri- 
culture. The troubled state of his native land in contrast with 
the peace and prosperity of France made him reflect philoso- 
phically on the happiness of peasants working undisturbed in 
the fields ; prepared him for something of the Vergilian mood. 

La Coltivazione was written in fragments, a fact which helps 
to account for its faultiness of plan. It is in six books, num- 
bering in all more than 5,000 lines, written in blank verse in 

Colt., I, 1134-37: 

A te drizzo il mio stil ; per te sono oso 

D'esser primo a versar nei lidi Toschi, 

Del divia fonte, che con tanto onore 

Sol conobbe, e gusto Mantova, ed Ascre. 
Colt., m, 15-19 : 

Voi mi potete sol inenar al porto, 

Francesco invitto, per questa onda sacra 

Che per lo addietro ancor non e(bbe incarco 

D'altro legno Toscano; e primo ardisco 

Pur col vostro favor dar vele ai venti. 

23 Op. cit., p. 264. 

24 Cp. the first lines of II Diluvio Romano: 

Io volea gia cantar, gran re de' Franchi, 
L'arte, l'opre, gl'ingegni e le stagioni, 
Che fan verdi le piagge, i frutti ombrosi, 
Colmi i prati e' pastor d'erbe e di' gregge, 
E ricco il cacciator d'augelli e fere. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



61 



the Florentine tongue. 25 The first four books treat of agricul- 
tural labors of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the fifth 
is of gardens, the sixth of lucky and unlucky days. Alamanni 
makes use of many sources, 26 but his debt to Vergil is by far 
the greatest. To quote Hauvette, " En dehors des nombreuses 
idees, images, expressions, ou l'on reconnait, un peu partout, 
l'echo des Georgiques, a certains moments Alamanni a traduit 
plutot que paraphrase le poeme de Virgile." The main features 
of the georgic are all present, except that Alamanni has no long 
episodes like the story of Aristaeus. But the poem is very far 
from the perfection of the Yergilian model. Only so enthusi- 
astic a critic as Ginguene can fail to admit that the plan of 
La Coltivazione is not good. The first four books, of the 
Seasons, Hauvette remarks, are reasonable, if not artistic. 
Bk. v necessarily repeats observations about the seasons. Bk. 
vi entirely lacks originality, being merely a translation of 
Vergil. Ginguene comments upon it as a long fragment, to 
which, after having written it, the author is unable to assign 
a place. It has no prologue, no epilogue, no episodes. It begins 
abruptly with the choice of days; and ends abruptly with 
presages to be drawn from changes of weather, from the song, 
the flight, and the different habits of birds. 

La Coltivazione is not, like the Georgics, preeminently a 
poem of Italy. Alamanni's inspiration 27 is French, * not 
Italian. The dedication is to Francis I, and the poet eulogizes 
not his native land, but France. The country described, 
declares Hauvette, is that at the foot of the Alps, not at the 
foot of the Appenines. The fields of France inspired the Tuscan 
poet. When he speaks of Tuscan scenes and usages it is as of 
something remembered far away. His agricultural precepts are 
general, as his title indicates. He is thinking, it seems, of 
instructions concerning agriculture in all countries and at all 

25 Hauvette states that the publication of La Colt, in 1546 is important 
in the history of Italian blank verse. The meter is in general monotonous, 
but it led the way for others. 

26 Cf. Ginguene^ op. ext. p. 12 ; Hauvette, op. ext. p. 273. 
" Cf. Hauvette, op. tit. p. 269. 



62 



The Georgic 



times. But so much for criticism. Hauvette observes that one 
of the merits most willingly ascribed to the poem is its faithful 
representation of what was then the culture in Tuscany. 

No one can bring against Alamanni the accusation that La 
Coltivazione was not written primarily to instruct. On the 
contrary, the poet seems afraid that he will amuse. In his 
poem he expresses fear that farm laborers will give themselves 
up to laziness under the pretext of enjoying holidays. He 
prides himself on the avoidance of long digressions, intimating 
that Vergil sinned in this respect. 28 But Alamanni does not 
entirely avoid digressions, some of which are over-long and some 
of which are not well placed. The Golden Age, for example, is 
discussed in the middle of Bk. n, in an episode of more than 
one hundred and fifty lines. It is abruptly introduced, and 
ends by proposing Francis I as an example of a wise and happy 
life. 

The description of the Golden Age is Horatian rather than 
Vergilian, altho Vergil is imitated in part. Alamanni brings 
out the point that necessity begot invention; but he does not 
touch on Vergil's belief that it was for man's benefit that Father 
Jove instituted cares. He emphasizes the truth that it is man's 
destiny to suffer, and that he must submit. Yet, altho the 
Tuscan poet reflects upon the bitterness of human life and the 
quick coming of weary old age and death, 29 he dwells philo- 
sophically on the truth that thru reproduction Nature secures 
to her creatures immortality; and unlike Tusser, he looks with 
envious idealization on the peasant state, deciding that it is 
possible to show future generations that his age so " neghittoso 
e vil , non dorme in tutto." 30 

88 Cf. Hauvette, op. cit. pp. 280 ff.; Colt., m, 20-25: 

Non mi vedrete andar con larghi giri 
Traviando sovente a mio diporto, 
Per lidi ameni, ove piu frondi, e fiori 
Si ritrovan talor che frutti ascosi; 
Ma per dritto sentier mostrando aperto 
I tempi, e'l buon oprar del pio cultore. 

39 Colt., I, 330 ff. 30 Colt., I, 599 ff. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



63 



The opinion has been ventured that Alamanni's precepts have 
been of benefit to peasants ; 31 Hauvette thinks that this is not 
likely. The success of the poem in the sixteenth century he 
believes due largely to its classic form. The reading public was 
not especially interested in agriculture, but resigned itself to the 
subject only because Alamanni followed in the footsteps of 
Hesiod and Vergil. 32 

The true vogue of La Coltivazione begins in the eighteenth 
century. From 1716 to 1781 the poem was printed twenty 
times, and the Italians venerated Alamanni as a glorious ances- 
tor, altho Trance, unaccountably, and in Ginguene's opinion, 
inexcusably, neglected him. 

In general, Italian critics praise the poem highly. Ginguene's 
praise is extravagant; but he avows sadly, "La Coltivazione 
est un des poemes les plus vantes qui existent dans la langue 
Italienne, mais ce n'est pas un de ceux qu'on lit le plus ; l'aus- 
terite de sujet en est sans doute la cause," 33 The French critic 
seems to recognize no other cause; but his judgment is not more 
surprising than that of the Italian poet, Parini, 34 who pro- 
nounces La Coltivazione one of the books that it is a reproach 
not to have read. 

Read after Ginguene, Hauvette' s discussion of La Coltiva- 
zione is refreshing ; but more than this, it is the most illuminat- 
ing work that I have seen on the subject, valuable as literary 
history, and as criticism. Hauvette is certainly uninfluenced 
by older writers on the Tuscan poet; he considers with equal 
fairness the defects and the merits of the poem : and Hauvette 
is probably the critic best fitted to speak of Alamanni and of 
his work. 

Historically considered, La Coltivazione is of interest; any- 
one with a predilection for georgic poetry might read parts of 

31 M. E. Peroopo, Gesch. der ital. Lit., p. 347. See Hauvette, op. cit. p. 280. 

82 From 1546 to 1549 there were four editions of La Colt., after which it 
was not reprinted until 1590. Cp. Hauvette, op. cit. p. 300. 

83 Op. cit. p. 11. 

^PrincipU delle belle lettere (Opere, Milan, 1804). Vol. vi, p. 205. See 
Hauvette, op. cit. p. 301. 



64 



The Gsorgic 



it with pleasure, but it is very hard to understand how it can 
excite rapturous praise. A modern critic of unprejudiced mind 
can hardly fail to pronounce it overlong, badly planned, and as 
a whole, very tedious. 

Altho many sixteenth-century Italians wrote georgics, no one 
of the age seems to have imitated Alamanni by writing a serious 
and lengthy verse treatise on Agriculture. 35 In 1560 Luigi 
Tansillo wrote II Podere 36 sl didactic which reads like the 
introductory chapters of a general treatise on rustic affairs. 
Tansillo, however, does not take his subject over seriously. The 
poem is divided into three brief " capitoli," 37 which he himself 
describes as " rime basse e versi giocosi." 38 Capitolo i treats 
of the choice of location, capitolo n mainly of the diversities of 
lands, and of how to know good soils, capitolo m, of the building 
of the house. 

The poet, familiarly conversing with a friend 39 who has 
recently expressed a desire to buy a farm, attempts to teach in 
a few words what he himself has learned in years. He repeats 
many familiar maxims and imitates other favorite georgic con- 
ventions. 40 He emphasizes the value of toil, but the theme is 
treated less seriously than in the poems of Vergil and Alamanni. 
One would hardly characterize II Podere as a " glorification of 
labor." The praise of country life in contrast to city evils, and 
the precepts concerning soils are the most Vergilian features of 
the poem. 

The poet's friend is advised to buy what costs least and 

35 TJios. Kirchmayer's Agricultura Sacra (Basil, 1550), translated by 
Barnaby Googe as The BoJce of Spiritual Husbandry, is an equally serious 
attempt of an allegorical nature. See above, p. 42. 

86 L'Egloga e i Poemetti, con introd. e note di Francesco Flamini, Napoli, 
1893. The poem was printed for the first time at Turin, 1769. 

87 In all, 1158 verses of smoothly-flowing terza rima. 

38 Cp. Letter to Antonio Scarampi, Flamini, op. cit., p. xcix. 

39 Signor Giovan Battista Venere. See dedication to the poem. Flamini, 
op. cit. p. 195. 

40 The poem lacks the stock opening, the address to the Muse, the address 
to a patron, the panegyric, the marking of time by the constellations, the 
discussion of weather signs, and the long narrative episode. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



65 



pleases most; to consider what will be best for physical well- 
being and for peace of mind ; and finally to choose a mountain- 
ous region because of the view. Tansillo makes no pretense of 
delivering precepts for the benefit, of an uneducated peasantry. 

Like Alamanni, he makes a strong point of evils due to bad 
neighbors, 41 and like Alamanni, he has a digression arising 
from this theme. But Alamanni has a long and serious episode 
on emigrations ancient and modern. Tansillo gaily tells iEsop's 
fable of the tortoise who asked the privilege of carrying her 
house on her back, in order to be able to avoid at will distasteful 
neighbors. The theme of present-day corruptions appears in 
the poet's denunciation of the ravages made by the " galeoti n 
along the Neapolitan coasts, while Naples sleeps! The poet 
professes himself a man of peace, but he considers it his coun- 
try's duty to make war against such outrages. 42 

Discoursing on the differences of soils, he pauses to give a 
brief account of the Golden Age, 43 and the evil times that fol- 
lowed, due, according to his version, to the theft of the heavenly 
fire and the plucking of the forbidden apple. 

He adorns his moralizations on the effects of thrift and indus- 
try by telling iEsop's fable of the dying man who requested his 
sons to dig for buried treasure in their vineyard, 44 and by nar- 
rating Pliny's story of the husbandman tried for sorcery because 
of the great produce of his small farm. 45 

A discussion on roadways leads to a digression on the subject 
of woman, 46 lines not paralleled, so far as I have discovered, in 
any other georgic. 

■° Colt., iv, 354 ff . ; Pod., I, 357 ff . Op. also Praedium Rusticum, I, p. 7 ff. 
* Pod., II, 121-147. A reference to foreign countries occurs in this same 
passage. 

43 Pod., n, 163-188. 44 Pod., u, 190 ff. 

45 Pod., II, 201 ff . Rene Rapin, Horti, iv, 124 ff ., tells the same story, 
making the hero a " farmer of the Marsic race," who shows his well^polished 
implements and produces his stout wife and daughter as accomplices in his 
magic arts. Delille, L'Homme de Champs, n, 90 ff., repeats the story, but 
cites his source, Plinii Hist. Nat. f 1. xviii, sect, viii, C. Furius Cresinus, a 
liberated slave, the accused. 

48 Pod., in, 28 ff. Tansillo shows himself very generous-minded towards 

5 



66 



The Georgic 



Considering his friend's spiritual needs, the poet advises him 
to have a " magion di santo " 47 nearby. Thus his soul will 
have more advantages than if he were in the city. The city has 
more pastimes, but it has also more evils. Blessed is he who 
realizes his happiness among cultivated hills and valleys and 
fields. Happy he who knows the causes of things, and can tread 
underfoot all fears of fate and death. 48 But happier he who 
having seen the world betakes himself to the country, and gives 
himself to God. " Would that I," cries the poet, " might betake 
myself to the plains at the foot of a mountain, and there amid 
the joys of family life put into practice the arts taught in 
writing by Cato, Vergil, Pliny, Columella, 49 and the others." 
An idyll of the innocent joys of country life follows, with a 
companion picture, politely satirical, of the luxury, the hollow- 
ness, and the vices of city life. 

The unexpected close of the poem, writes Flamini, is worthy 
of note. It is particularly worthy of note as the conclusion of a 
georgic. After a number of varied precepts concerning the 
building of the house and its situation among gardens and 
woods, Tansillo affects to discover that his friend is in love. 
Encouraging him, the poet cries : 

Ed io vi dico: Fratel mio, segulte, 

Segufte Amor 

Che sembra un' alma, dove Amor non stanze, 
Casa di notte senza foco o face ! 00 

following his advice with a digression on the theory of love, 
after which he remarks: " While I believed that we were going 

the weaker sex. It is both interesting and edifying to know that a sixteenth- 
century Italian thought it worth while to remind noble gentlemen that they 
are not savage consorts, that women are not beasts of ithe stable, that their 
pleasure must be considered, and that if you take them to the country you 
must provide ways (by which they may occasionally have something more 
interesting to look at than trees and hedges. 
« Pod., in, 46 ff. 

48 Pod., in, 46-87. Cp. Georg., n, 475-495. 

49 " Columella," says Flamini, " is the source among the ancients most 
freely plundered by Tansillo." Op. cit., Introd., p. c. 
60 Pod., in, 334-339. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



67 



to a country place, our feet were leading us to the forest of Love. 
Here let the way be ended," 

Qual il poder si compri, io v'ho gia mostro 
A consiglio d'antichi e di moderni, 
Perehe sia buono e degno d'esser vostro. 
Se gli affanni domestici o gli esterni 
Non m'impediscon,. forse, un di di questi, 
Diro come si tratte e si governi. 81 

The poem ends with the regret that few indeed come to honor 
Flora, Pomona, Ceres, and Leneus : 

Ma non possan mai ipunto abbandonarlo ; 
E quanto scrisse il Mantovan, l'Ascreo, 
II Greco e'l Moro, e chi 'n sul Tebro nacque, 
Di buon vi venga, e fuggane di reo; 
E piaccia sempre a voi piu ehe non piacque, 
El al produrre ed al servar de' frutti, 
Propizie egli abbia le stagioni e l'acque 
L'aure e le stelle e gli elementi tutti. 

II Podere has been praised as among the most brilliant writ- 
ings of Tansillo's time. Certainly it is one of the few really 
charming imitations of the Georgics, an interesting illustration 
of the possibilities of the type. The poet is inspired by no high 
call to instruct a nation, and he makes no claim to tread heights 
untrodden before. He has no episodes descriptive of nature; 
and he does not write as if from experience of the joys of coun- 
try life, — rather as if he has read much of them and dreamed 
more. Flamini says of II Podere that it is a free and judicious 
imitation; it is an imitation made alive by a gracious person- 
ality, and the sure touch of the artist who writes sometimes 
lightly, sometimes earnestly, but always simply and naturally, 
because his heart is in what he has to say. 

II Podere is a slight work. Naturally it will not bear com- 
parison with Vergil's Georgics, and had Tansillo attempted a 
serious agricultural treatise he would probably have failed. But 

51 Pod., m, 364. Tansillo never fulfilled his promise, but in 1566 he wrote 
of the rearing of infants in La Balia (printed 1767). Tusser, in the Five 
Hundred Povntes, H 92, treats the same subject under the heading, " The 
Good Motherlie Nurserie." 



68 



The Georgic 



he was wise enough to realize the scope of his powers, and in 
his third capitolo he succeeded in achieving a poem that even 
the stern critic Carducci praises. 52 

4. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Poems on Agriculture 

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century the poets seem 
to have wisely avoided the theme of general agriculture. In the 
eighteenth century proof of this wisdom may he had in the 
dreary efforts of de Rosset, Vaniere, and Dodsley. 

Pierre Larousse 53 gives a brief account of de Rosset's nine 
hooks on Agriculture, which may be summed up as follows: 
The poem treats successively fields, vines, woods, meadows, 
poultry yards, plants, kitchen gardens, pleasure gardens, pools, 
and fish ponds. The writer uses some bizarre digressions con- 
cerning the vine, beginning with a description of the deluge, 
and ending with an account of carnival. The verses are, in 
general, lacking in color and relief, but there are some agreeable 
details and some successful passages. 

Wordsworth 54 is said to have borrowed from de Rosset, but 
so far as I know, U Agriculture is otherwise a poem of no espe- 
cial influence. 

Jacques Vaniere's Praedium Pusticum is an even more thoro- 
going agricultural treatise than that of de Rosset, since it con- 
sists of no less than sixteen books, in all, nearly ten thousand 
lines of Latin verse on almost every subject connected with 
country life, from the buying and keeping up of a country estate, 
to details concerning the chase. 

Vaniere began by publishing several short Latin poems, 
georgic in character. Encouraged by their success, he used 

■ That II Podere was not printed during the poet's lifetime was probably 
due to his own desire. Flamini, op. cit. p. 104, cites five editions that 
appeared between the first imprint of 1768 and 1810. The didactics of 
Tansillo seem to have shared the vogue of La Coltivazione in the eighteenth 
century. 

63 Op. cit., cp. above, p. 5. 

B * See £mile Legouis, The Early Life of William Wordsworth, tr. by J. W. 
Matthews, London, J. M. Dent and Co., 1897, p. 143, notes 1 and 2. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



69 



them as part of the Praedium Rusticum which was published at 
Toulouse in 1730. The entire poem was translated into French 
by Bertrand d'Halouvry in 1756, after the author's death. 
According to Pierre Larousse 55 " de l'aveu des meilleurs cri- 
tiques, il s'est approche de Virgile autant qu'il est permis aux 
poetes latins modernes de le faire." Perhaps these words may 
serve as a warning to modern poets not to attempt to write Latin 
verse. Yet the Praedium Rusticum is a poem not without 
merit and interest, to anyone who has the patience to read it. 
Writers on the georgic such as Delille, de Rosset, and Saint 
Lambert 56 consider it in their discussions ; and certainly it is 
of value as an illustration of the curious hold that the georgic 
type had on the eighteenth-century mind, and of the fashion in 
which the same conventions and the same themes recur over and 
over again in georgic poetry. 57 

Dodsley's Agriculture 58 appeared in 1754, three cantos, 
written in blank verse. The first canto is mainly introductory, 
dealing with general advantages of the farmer's life ; but various 
farm implements are recommended, and technically described. 
The second canto treats of soils and trees, the third of harvest. 

In the preface Dodsley states his limitations, admitting that 
he has little learning; 59 but his poem shows that he is well 
acquainted with the Vergilian didactics and that he has great 
reverence for his model. Altho he does not imitate the unity 
of plan in the Georgics, he carefully follows the georgic con- 
ventions. 

The poem is addressed to the Prince of Wales ; Pure Intelli- 

65 Op. cit. vol. xv, p. 764. 
56 See above, p. 5. 

5T In the Paris edition of 1746, marginal notes aid the reader in a study 
of the author's use of georgic features. This volume is of especial value 
because of the delightful woodcuts that adorn each book. 

^Eobt. Anderson: Brit. Poets, vol. xi. Dodsley had planned to write 
in three books (i, Agriculture; H, Commerce; m, Arts) a poem entitled 
Public Virtue. He completed only the first book. 

59 This fact is noteworthy, for all the other imitators of the Georgics, 
unless "Falconer be classed among them, are men familiar with the classics 
from youth. 



70 



The Georgic 



gence, " Genius of Britain," is invoked. The Muse figures 
prominently. She disdains, be it noted, idle themes, and the 
farmer is bidden to attend her and thus become frugal and blest ; 
so shall Industry give him peace, while the Great, diseased by 
luxury and sloth, envy him. 

A narrative episode tells the romantic tale of a milkmaid, 
Patty, whose conventional charms, " ivory teeth," " lips of 
living coral," and " breath sweeter than the morning gale," win 
the love of Thyrsis, who, altho he is her social superior, marries 
her and lives with her in a state of Golden Age happiness. 

Dodsley's imitation of Vergil's " O f ortunatos nimium " 60 
is, perhaps, the more pleasing for the poet's lack of Latin. He 
knows the meaning of the simple life, and has learned to value 
truly " the gracious nothing of a great man's nod." The pas- 
sage ends with the religious note that " rural joys invite to 
sacred thought and meditation on God." 61 

Being an eighteenth-century poet, and an imitator of Vergil, 
Dodsley burns to explore the secret ways of sweet Philosophy, 
but he particularly desires to know the causes of fruitfulness in 
the vegetable world, and because of this desire he ventures upon 
an allegory in which he attempts to explain the theory of vege- 
tation. 

The second canto has many echoes of Vergil ; and Thomson's 
influence can be seen. The poet's dreams of an ideal estate are 
eighteenth-century dreams in accord with the new English fash- 
ions of landscape gardening, and are based on an intimate and 
loving knowledge of Shenstone's Leasowes and Lyttleton's 
Hagley. 

The canto closes with a passage on the lessons of Epicurus, 
emphasizing the belief that the end of life is happiness, and 
virtue the means to that end. The whole passage is a rhapsody 
on the blessings of retired rural life. 62 

60 Agricult., I, 299 ff. Cp. Georg. n. 

61 Cp. the conclusion of Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, Bk. m, 
original version. 

" Cp. the conclusion of Georg. n. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



71 



In the third canto, harvesting, the products of England's soil, 
and the care of cattle are discussed. In the section on harvest- 
ing the poet dwells on the ills that constantly threaten life, 
treating the subject with an eighteenth-century note, in a prayer 
to Heaven to protect the farmer from the carelessness of the 
huntsman. 63 Dodsley makes also an outcry against the oppres- 
sions of the rich, but he very justly dwells upon the fact that 
some wise and good masters still exist. 

In a visit to the happy Patty of Canto i, precepts are deliv- 
ered concerning cheesemaking and the care of horses, the latter 
topic calling forth a protest against the unnecessary cruelty of 
drivers of draught horses. 64 The poem closes with an address 
to the Prince of Wales, in georgic spirit urging him to embrace 
the arts of peace rather than the arts of war. 

Dodsley's poem is not a long and detailed treatise on agricul- 
ture like the works of de Kosset and Vaniere, but it has been 
less considered than even those ill-fated efforts. It can hardly 
be called good poetry, altho it has some pleasing passages. It is 
interesting partly because it illustrates eighteenth-century habits 
of thought, chiefly because Dodsley wrote it. That one of the 
most successful of London booksellers, associated with the most 
brilliant men of his time, thought it worth while to write a 
georgic, is significant of the literary indulgence, if not of the 
literary taste, of the period. That the complete design of the 
poet was not carried out indicates that there were limits to the 
endurance even of the eighteenth century. That Dodsley real- 
ized the imperfections of his poem, and that he received some 
encouragment regarding it, may be seen from the words of 
Horace Walpole, 65 "I am sorry you think it any trouble for 
me to peruse your poem again. I always read it with pleasure.' ' 

Erasmus Darwin might be expected to have written a georgic, 
but he did not. The nearest approach that he made to following 

Cp. Shenstone, Rural Elegance, st. 2; Gay, Rural Sports, 281 ff.; Somer- 
ville, The Chase, I, 51 ff. 
•* Cp. Gay, Trivia, n, 231 ff. 

m Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Mrs. Paget Toymbee, Oxford, 1903, vol. 
m, p. 195. 



72 



The Georgic 



this literary fashion is found in his Phytologia, or the Phi- 
losophy of Agriculture and Gardening, a prose work published 
at London and at Dublin in 1800, 66 in which, at intervals, he 
breaks into verse. 

Discussing the effect of winds, Darwin quotes the old proverb, 

The wind from north-east 
Destroys man and beast: 
The wind from south-west 
Is always the best. 67 

He translates into rimed couplets Vergil's lines on grafting; 6 * 
and he concludes a section on the art of producing flower-buds 
with a verse quotation from the Botanic Garden.™ In conclud- 
ing his observations on fruits, he prefaces a poetic outburst on 
the " Art of Pruning Wall Trees " with the remark, " The 
following lines are inserted to amuse the reader, and to imprin i 
some of the foregoing doctrine on his memory." 70 To show 
what Darwin might have done in the way of a georgic, I quote 
a specimen of this outburst on the " Art of Pruning Wall 
Trees " : 

Behead new-grafted trees in spring, 
Ere the first cuckoo tries to sing; 
But leave four swelling buds to grow 
With wide-diverging arms below; 

and another still more characteristic specimen from The Art of 
Pruning Melons and Cucumbers: 

When melon, cucumber and gourd, 
Their two first rougher leaves afford 
Ere yet these second leaves advance 
Arm'd with fine knife or scissors good 
Bisect or clip the central bud: 
Whence many a lateral branch instead 
Shall rise like hydra's fabled head. 
When the fair belles in gaudy rows 
Salute their vegetable beaux; 



68 My citations are from the London edition. 

67 Sect, xiii, p. 306. 68 Sect, xv, p. 391. 

69 Sect, xv, p. 412. Cp. The Botanic Gwden, vol. I, canto 4, 1. 465. 
T0 Sect, xv, p. 429. 



Didactic Poems on General Agriculture 



73 



And, as they lose their virgin bloom, 
Shew, ere it swells, the pregnant womb ; 
Lop, as each crowded branch extends, 
The barren flowers and leafy ends. 

He concludes a section on leaves and wood with a poetic address 
to Swilcar Oak, 71 which he thinks " may amuse the weary 
reader." And his final outburst is really a brief georgic on the 
cultivation of Brocoli, translated in part from the elegant Latin 
poem of Edward Tighe, Esq. 72 This remarkable production 
begins as follows : 

There are of learned taste, who still prefer 

Cos-lettuce, tarragon, and cucumber; 

There are, who still with equal praises yoke 

Young peas, asparagus, and artichoke ; 

Beaux there are still with lamb and spinach nurs'd, 

And clowns eat beans and bacon, till they burst. 

This boon I ask of Fate, where'er I dine, 

O, be the Proteus form of cabbage mine! — 

Cale, colewort, cauliflower, or soft and clear 

If Brocoli delight thy nicer ear. 

Give, rural Muse ! the culture and the name 

In verse immortal to the rolls of Fame. 

Directions follow for sowing cabbage seed, hoeing the young 
plants, etc., the time for each successive labor being marked by 
the zodiacal sign; and the effort concludes with the following 
address to the writer whose " elegant Latin verses are in part 
translated " : 

Oft in each month, poetic Tighe, be thine 
To dish green Brocoli with savory chine; 
Oft down thy tuneful throat be thine to cram 
The snow-white cauliflower with fowl and ham! — 
Nor envy thou, with such rich viands blest, 
The pye of Perigord, or Swallow's nest. 

In 1809, James Grahame published at Edinburgh a quarto 
volume of three hundred and forty pages in blank verse, entitled 

B Sect, xviii, p. 528. 

72 Sect, xix, p. 560. I have not been able tto identify Edward Tighe. He 
might be the Edward Tighe, M. P. for Wicklow, 1790, named in Burke's 
Genealogical amd Heraldic Hist, of the Landed Gentry of Ireland. 



74 



The G&orgic 



British Georgics. An interesting criticism of the poem is given 
in the Edinburgh Review. 73 An idea of the style of this lengthy 
effort may be had from a number of extracts quoted, mostly 
descriptive passages, and those in which " the author's tender- 
ness and kindness of heart ... is very conspicuous." The 
comment on the title, " British Georgics," is of particular inter- 
est : " The ' Georgics ' may be, as Mr. Grahame assures us, the 
proper appellation for all treatises of husbandry in verse, the 
1 Scottish Farmer's Kalendar ' would have been a little more 
descriptive of the plan and substance of the work before us. 
The scenery Scotch, the poem divided into twelve parts or 
sections arranged in order, and under the names of the twelve 
months of the year, with full directions for all farm work in 
each month respectively." 

The writer in the Review expresses the opinion that the poem 
will not remove the general objections to didactic poetry. He 
is convinced that no practical farmer will be willing to become 
instructed thru the medium of blank verse, and lovers of poetry, 
he believes, will become discouraged by the precepts that would 
interest the farmer if written in a less ambitious form. The 
conclusion of the critic with regard to the poem is very generous 
not only to Mr. Grahame, but to all writers and to all readers 
of georgics. " They who do read on, however," he declares, 
" will be rewarded, we think, by many pleasing and beautiful 
passages; and even those, whose natures are too ungentle to 
admire this kind of poetry, must love the characters from which 
it proceeds, and which it has so strong a tendency to form." 

The British Georgics seem to have been the last serious 
attempt at a didactic dealing with general agricultural pre- 
cepts. 74 If any other poems of this nature were written, even 
their names have become lost to the public ; and Grahame's work, 
far from " removing the general objections to didactic poetry," 
has, itself, almost completely passed into oblivion. 

73 1810, vol. xvi, p. 213 ff. 

"Altho Francis Jammes' poem Les Georgiques chretiervnes treats of agri- 
cultural labors, it 'cannot be said to deal with precepts concerning agricul- 
ture. See above, pp. 46-47. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



75 



CHAPTER V 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 
1. From Columella to William Mason 

Vergil, regretting that he is debarred by scanty space 1 from 
lingering on the theme of " Gardens,'' leaves it to others who 
will come after him. 1 Columella 2 was the first to undertake 
the task. He begins his Carmen de Cultu Hortonum: 

Hortorum quoque te cultus, Silvine, docebo, 
Atque ea, quae quondam spatiis exclusus iniquis, 
Cum eaneret laetas segetes et munera Bacchi, 
Et te, magna Pales, nec non caelestia mella, 
Vergilius nobis post se memoranda reliquit. 

This introduction is followed by precepts on gardening ; such 
matters as soils, sites and irrigation being treated in detail. 
Vergil is imitated in the use of mythological allusions, in the 
marking of time by the constellations, and in references to the 
products of foreign countries; but in the later writer's work 
there is nothing of Vergil's imagination, Vergil's delicacy of 
perception, Vergil's brotherhood with all things that live and 
grow. Columella was no doubt moved by a pious motive, but 
it would, perhaps, have been as wise had he written the tenth 
book of the De Re Rustica in prose. 

In the centuries immediately after Columella, other writers 
may have been moved to avail themselves of Vergil's legacy; 
but they either found themselves unequal to the task of the 
didactic on gardens, or the public failed in appreciation of their 
efforts. In medieval monasteries, however, delight in nature 
found expression in verse. Agriculture flourished under the 
care of skilled monks, and gardening was a recreation as well 

1 Georg., iv, 147-148. 

2 Columella lived in the 1st c. A. D. See above, p. 28. The tenth book 
of his treatise on agriculture is written in hexameters. Rei Rustioae Liber 
Decimus. Vpsalae, 1902. 



76 



The Georgic 



as a labor. " The idyll of the cloister garden so often treated 
became famous in the much-read Hortulus of Wahlafried," 3 
a brief poem belonging to the ninth century, in which the writer 
tells in detail how he works with his own hands in his garden, 
and describes his herbs and flowers, lingering upon their uses 
and their loveliness. The poem shows classical influence; the 
first lines and the conclusion, with its address to Grimald, sug- 
gest the character of the georgic ; but Wahlaf rid evidently made 
no effort to follow the Vergilian plan, and he makes no allusion 
to Vergil's bequest of the theme of gardens. The Hortulus can 
hardly be said to have any plan. The first part tells of the poet's 
work in his garden ; the remainder is divided into sections treat- 
ing of different herbs and flowers, one variety following the 
other quite indiscriminately. First one reads of lilies and pop- 
pies, then of plants useful as medicines and in the kitchen. The 
lines on radishes are followed by a description of the rose. Yet 
there are in the poem graceful and poetic touches, and at least 
it can be said that Wahlafrid writes with more imagination of 
the rose than of the radish. 

From the ninth to the fifteenth century there is a blank in the 
history of the didactic on gardens. Then Palladius was trans- 
lated into English verse, and " Mayster Ion Gardener " 4 wrote 
his curious verses on the theme with which, one might judge 
from his name, he was most familiar. There is nothing more 
than his name by which to judge, for, so far, he has not been 
identified. The poem was apparently written somewhere be- 
tween 1440 and 1450. The title heading of the manuscript, 
" The Feate of Gardening," is added in a later hand. The 
dialect of the poem points to Kent, which was famous for gar- 
dens and orchards. 

The Middle English Palladius has a number of interesting 

3 A. Biese, op. cit., ip. 61. Walafrid, or Wahlafrid Strabo, abbot of 
Reichenau, d. 849. The Hortulus has been published in a number of Latin 
collections. See Migne, Patr. Lat. Paris, 1852, vol. 114, pp. 1119-1130. 

4 " On a Fifteenth Century Treatise on Gardening. By Mayster Ion 
Gardener." With remarks communicated by the Hon. Alicia M. Tyssen 
Amherst. Archaeologia, 1894, pp. 157 ff. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



77 



pages on gardening ; but John Gardener's verses are more inter- 
esting because the " Feate of Gardening " is not only the earliest 
English poem on this subject, but, so far as I know, the earliest 
English' georgic on any subject. The poem, itself, is rude dog- 
gerel, of value in the history of English gardens, as in the history 
of the didactic on English gardens. John Gardener's instruc- 
tions are very sensible and reasonable, very free, Mrs. Amherst 
remarks, from superstitions regarding astrology, and from 
extravagant fancies in grafting and growing plants. Equally 
free is the poet from rhetorical ambitions. In such direct 
fashion does the Feate of Gardening begin : 

Ho so wyl a gardener be 
Here he may both hyre & se 
Every time of the 3ere and of the mone 
lAnd how the crafte shall be done 
Yn what maner he shari delve & sette 
Bothe yn drowthe and yn wette 
How he ishall hys sedys sowe 
Of euery moneth he most knowe 
Bothe of wortys and of leke 
Ownyns and of gar leke 
Percely clarey and eke sage 
And all other herbage. 

The following lines on parsley illustrate' John Gardener's 
method of imparting precepts and show the pleasant quality of 
his rude verse : 

Percell kynde ys for to be 

To be sow yn t>e monthe of mars so mote y the 

He wul grow long and thykke 

And ever as he growyth J?u schalt hym kytte 

pu may hym kytte by resoun 

pryes yn one seson 

In the matter of superstitions, John Gardener's reasonable- 
ness contrasts strongly with the 'Middle English Palladius, of 
which the pages are adorned with curious suggestions. There 
is advised, for example, as a remedy against hail, the planting 
of white vines around the garden, or the setting up of an owl 
with outstretched wings. Thus writes the translator : 



78 



The Georgic 



Gird eke thi garth aboute in vynes white; 
Or, sprad the wynges oute, sette up an oule. 
Whi laugh ye so? this craft is not so lite. 
Or take thi spades, rake, knyff, and shovelle 
And evry tole in beres grees defoule, 
Eke sum have stamped oile with grees of beres 
To greece her vyne knyff for dyveres deres. 

But that a man must doo full prively, 
That never a warkman wite, and this is goode 
For frost, and myst, and wormes sekirly. 
But as I trust in X that shedde his bloode 
For us, who tristeth this Y hold him wode. 
Myn author eke, (whoo list in him travaille!) 
iSeith this prophaned thyng may nought availe. 5 

John Gardener's treatise was certainly uninfluenced by the 
beliefs of Palladius; nor does he show acquaintance with 
literary models of any kind. He wrote, evidently, from practi- 
cal experience, perhaps, like the translator of the Palladius, at 
some special request or command. His verses mark the rude 
beginnings that culminate in such " elegant " attempts as those 
of Mr. Mason's English Garden, as Paganino Bonafede's 6 
beginnings culminate in such works as La Coltivazione and 
II Canapajo. 

In the sixteenth century, I know of only one poem on the 
subject of the cultivation of gardens, Giuseppe Milio Voltolina's 
Delia Coltura degli Orti, published at Brescia in the year 1574. 7 
Tiraboschi mentions an essay by Cardinal Querini in which this 
work is highly praised; and he remarks also that had Pere 
Rapin known of Yoltolina's poem he would not have boasted of 
having been the first to write of gardens. 

In the Five hundred Pointes of Good Husbandry Thomas 
Tusser has some stanzas on gardening, in which he gives general 
rules for the recognition of good soil, and tells the reader when 
and how to " sow and set." 8 

5 Palladius, op. cit., p. 31. "See above, p. 29. 

7 Tiraboschi, op. cit., T, vii, p. 2137. 

8 46-48 ff. In " Marches Abstract," 38, Tusser gives long lists of various 
seeds, herbs, and flowering plants, naming their uses and the time to sow 
and set them. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



79 



The fifth book of Alamanni's Coltivazione is of gardens 
" come si coltivano in ogni stagione," but the Tuscan poet does 
not mention the fact that he is developing the theme that Vergil 
regretted to leave unsung. The book begins with an invitation 
to Priapus, followed by an extravagant eulogy of King Francis 
and a tribute to the gardens of Fontainebleau. The poet treats 
digging and manuring, and the varieties of flowers, moralizing 
on the power of industry and art to accomplish all things and 
digressing at great length on the differences in animals, men, 
and races. 

He sings of flowers; roses, lilies and hyacinths; and of the 
tree of the Hesperides, the golden fruit of the tropics ; of hum- 
ble but equally useful plants, artichokes, cucumbers, gourds, 
onions, etc. ; but he makes little more appeal to the imagination 
when he writes of roses and hyacinths than when he talks of 
cucumbers and gourds. However, his practical advice is worth 
considering ; his pious selections seem none the less devout, his 
account of the small annoyances of gardening none the less 
depressing, because they are what one expects to find in a 
mediocre georgic. 

Altho Columella is one of Alamanni's sources, 9 the tenth 
book of the De Re Rusiica is neither used nor referred to by 
the Florentine poet. However, in his book on gardens, Ala- 
manni does not claim, as does Rene Kapin, to explore 

With bold attempt a way untrod before. 

Rapin's Horti, 10 one of the very few georgios to be found in 
the seventeenth century, is in four books : " Of Gardens," " Of 
Trees," " Of Waters," and " Of Orchards," all systematically 
planned and written according to the Yergilian model, all 
imitating carefully the Vergilian motives. 

In the preface Rapin defends his methods, particularly his 
digressions, and his selection of only the more general fruits. 
His digressions, he says, are warranted by the practice of the 

8 Cf. Ginguenfi, op. tit., p. 12; Hauvette, op. cit., p. 273. 
10 Paris, 1665. 



80 



The Georgic 



Greek poets, his use of selection by the example of Vergil. The 
end of didactic poetry, declares Rapin, is to instruct, and this 
is the chief end of poetry in general. The moral, however, does 
not shoot " point blank," but hits the mark none the less effec- 
tively. The great art of poetry is that of pleasing, whence it 
persuades, and herein it excels even philosophy, whose sole aim 
is to inform the understanding. 

Rapin lives up to his principle of not shooting the moral 
point blank, for he digresses continually, telling a story about 
almost every flower he names. An interesting episode arises 
from an account of the uses of flowers ; the story of a happy 
swain, who raised flowers for the curing of ills. Rapin here 
suggests the writing of a medicinal georgic, but leaves the task 
to someone else. 11 

Rapin's poem is particularly interesting for its precepts con- 
cerning formal gardening. Box hedges, straight gravel walks, 
and the esplanade, delight the poet's eye. He would have shud- 
dered at the thought of the " studied negligence '" of the English 
garden. 

Hallam 12 writes of Rapin: " For skill in varying and adorn- 
ing his subject, for truly Vergilian spirit in expression, for the 
exclusion of feeble, prosaic or awkward lines, he may perhaps 
be equal to any poet, to Sannazarius himself. His cadences are 
generally very gratifying to the ear, and in this respect he is 
much above Vida. But his subject or his genius has prevented 
him from rising very high ; he is the poet of gardens, and what 
gardens are to nature, that is he to mightier poets." Yet while 
the difficulties of Rapin's theme can easily be granted, remem- 
bering Vergil, one hardly hesitates to say that it is Rapin's 
genius, not his subject, that prevents him from rising very high. 

Rapin's Horti was translated into French and English, and 
like other georgics, seems to have been most widely read in the 

" See above, p. 42. 

33 Introd. to the Lit. of Ewrope m the 15th, 16th, <md 11th c. In 3 vols., 
Boston, 1854; vol. in, p. 491. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



81 



eighteenth century. 13 In 1728, Bernard Lintot, the publisher 
of James Gardiner's translation, observes that books of garden- 
ing were in great vogue, and gentlemen were curious about 
looking into them. He does not share Hallam's doubts regarding 
Rapin's genius and his subject, for he writes: " I will be bold 
to say that there is nothing in the whole Art of Gardening which 
is not to be found in Rapin, and that adorned with all the 
embellishments and Advantages that the greatest genius of his 
age could possibly give to so pleasant a subject in poetical dress." 
" Compare," adds Lintot, " the judicious Mr. Evelyn's opinion 
of it." The " judicious Mr. Evelyn " ends his Sylva or Dis- 
course of Forest Trees, with the following encomium : " I con- 
clude this book and whole discourse, of that incomparable Poem 
of Rapinus, as epitomizing all we have said. I cannot there- 
fore but wonder that excellent Piece, so elegant, pleasant, and 
instructive, should be no more inquired after." Lintot con- 
tinues : "It would be superfluous after this one encomium of 
Mr. Evelyn's, considering his character for veracity, Judgment 
in Poetry, and Skill in Gardening, to add any more in praise 
of the Original." 

Lintot adds that he has been enjoined to silence concerning 
the translator, but he cannot forbear to raise his voice in praise, 
and after Rapin's preface he prints several poems in Latin and 
in English, encomiums of Mr. Gardiner's excellent translation. 

Mr. Gardiner's translation is done in eighteenth-century 
couplets, in eighteenth-century style. His poem might very 
easily pass for an early eighteenth-century production, but it 
does not abound in the circumlocutions so prevalent in the 
georgics of the period, and Rapin's formal gardens are in strik- 
ing contrast to the landscapes of Knight and Mason and Delille. 

13 The second French translation in prose, printed with the Latin text, is 
by MM. Vyron and Cabiot, a new ed., Paris, 1802. It was suggested by 
a reading of Delille's Jardins. An English translation appeared in London, 
1673, Cambridge, 1706 (the year of the publication of Philip's Cyder), and 
in London, 1728, the latter Jas. Gardiner's " Englished Version," ed. 3. In 
the same year appeared also John Lawrence's Paradise Regained: or the 
Art of Gardening. 
6 



82 



The Gsorgic 



Mrs. Cecil 14 notes in her bibliography a Carmen de Cultu 
Hortorum by Eichard Kichardson, published in London in 
1669, but I know nothing further of either the writer or the 
poem. The first original eighteenth-century didactic on gardens 
written in English is, as far as I have been able to learn, the 
rare and curious work of John Lawrence, Paradise Regained: 
or the Art of Gardening. 1 '* To one uninterested in the georgic, 
this work, whose title promises so much, is a " dreary poem, 
so-called, of fifty-nine pages." A plague, it seems, is raging in 
town, so that the poet leaves, 

And now retir'd to Streams and Sylvan glades, 
With other fine Poetical Parades, 
To stations near, where Cowley tuned his Lyre, 
To Hills, exalted more by Denham's Fire, 
In Muse's Seats affect the Muses style, 
And Fancy feels a Heat more Juvenile. 
Often, amus'd with Feats in Gardening, 
Delightful Exercise, I work and Sing. 

These feats are then described, after which it appears that 
" at one view " there may be seen the Myrtle, Citron and other 
tropical trees. 

Then food plants are described, the author exclaiming, 

Assist me, therefore, Goddess, to express 
Such things as these if harsh, with easiness. 

Such things as " these " being cabbages, asparagus, artichoke, 
beans, etc. 16 

A passage on medicinal herbs follows, possibly inspired by 
Rapin. 

14 Op. cit., p. 344. See above, p. 53. 

16 For my knowledge of the contents of the rare and valuable edition of 
1728, I am indebted to my friend Mr. Hyder E. Rollins, who kindly read 
it for me at Harvard. 

16 One wonders whether it was from his knowledge of the georgic, or from 
his ignorance of it, that Dr. Johnson made his caustic comment on the 
theme of Grainger's didactic: "What could he make of a sugar cane? One 
might as well write, The Parsley-bed, a Poem, or The Cabbage-garden, a 
Poem." Of. Life by Boswell, ed. Hill, vol. n, p. 520. 



Didactic Po&ms on Gardens 



83 



Herbs Physical of divers qualities, 
I plant and in good order Methodize, 

In short whatever Malady you name 

That Death portends, or tortures, human Frame, 

Whether Catarrhs, with constant flux of Rheum, 

Or hectic Heats, that inwardly consume. 

If Dropsy Waters to th' Abdomen flow, 

Or Stone the Back, or Gout torments the Toe, 

Or if by chance, the Veins with Poison swell, 

Here grow those Herbs, that all these griefs repel. 

The author describes the mutual confidences established be- 
tween himself and the Bees, gives an account of the birds that 
visit his garden, and thus prefaces his conclusion : 

And having now described in some degree 
Perhaps with too great Partiality, 
A rural settlement that pleases me; 
To make some Recompense, if I offend, 
Would tack this useful Moral to the End. 

A moral which takes up five pages. Could anything be more 
characteristic of the spirit of the eighteenth century? A bad 
poet offers to make " Recompense " for his bad poetry by 
" tacking a useful moral to the end." 

Vaniere has among his sixteen georgics one on the kitchen 
garden, 17 five hundred and ninety-four lines, given chiefly to 
precepts on the subject. Others may sing of gardens redolent 
with beautiful flowers. He will devote himself to the humbler 
but more useful products of the Kitchen Garden, once meditated 
by the divine Maro. He refers to Rapin, who bore away the 
" first honors of the garden," but he does not mention Alamanni 
nor Columella. He has a few lines on lilies and roses, which 
flowers have also their " sober uses," but in the main he fulfills 
his promise. * With the exception of a Cain and Abel story 
without the tragic ending, and a mythological episode, he 
devotes himself almost wholly to the culture of vegetables dear 
to the French. 

* Op. cit., IX. Olus. 



s 



84 



The Gsorgic 



2. William Masons "The English Garden" and Delilles 
"J ardins " 

William Mason's poem, The English Garden, 1 * marks the 
beginning of a new epoch in the history of didactics on garden- 
ing. Mason has nothing to say of cabbages and parsley beds. 
Like Rapin, he writes for the rich, but he scorns precepts such 
as Rapin's; for the main object of his poem is to overthrow the 
rule of the formal garden, to encourage the newly awakened 
taste for romantic landscape effects. And in his teaching, he 
introduces another note, new to the didactic; a combination of 
the principles of painting with poetry, the address to grestt 
painters, and the invocation to Painting. 19 

All the familiar features of the georgic are present in The 
English Garden, except the use of proverbial sayings, the 
description of country pastimes, and the description of weather 
signs. Mason has also passages in praise of the advantages of 
simple country life, 20 but the spirit of the poem is not the spirit 
of Vergil, for Mason glorifies not the power of labor, but the 
power of taste combined with wealth, and his one picture of 
cottage life 21 is marked by the well-bred Englishman's patron- 
izing attitude towards the simple rustic; it has the sensible 
gentleman's point of view, entirely lacking Vergil's deep and 
understanding sympathy with the Italian peasantry. 

The poet declares that he does not court popular applause, • 
but writes to soothe his grief for his wife ; 22 however, he admits 

is tt jpjjg English Garden. A Poem in four books. To which are added a 
commentary and notes, by W. Burgh. The Works of Wm. Mason. In four 
volumes, London, 1811, Vol. I, p. 202 ff. The first book was written in 1772, 
the last in 1782. Mason is best known as the friend and biographer of the 
poet Gray. At Gray'is suggestion he undertook to write The English 
Garden. Book iv begins with an elegiac address to Gray. 

™ Cp. Courthope, Hist, of Eng. Poetry, Macmillan & Co., London, 1910. 
vol. vi, p. 29. 

30 The Eng. Garden, 459 ff., II, 132-136. 

21 The Eng. Garden, n, 406 ff. 

22 The Eng. Garden, I, 31 ff. Twentieth century readers may think that 
Mason was wise not to have counted on popular applause, but Chalmers in 
his biographical introduction to The English Garden, Eng. Poets, vol. vm, 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



85 



that lie cannot plead the ruggedness, nor the unpopularity of 
his subject, for he writes: 

With such a theme I sing 
Secure of candid audience. 23 

In describing fences, however, he makes the characteristic 
georgic complaint of the difficulty of his task, 24 and in neo- 
classic fashion attempts to elevate his lowly subject by absurd 
circumlocutions. 25 Exulting in the proud theme of forests, he 
suddenly cries : 

My weak tongue feels 
Its ineffectual powers, and seeks in vain 
That force of ancient phrase which, speaking, paints, 
And is the thing it sings. Ah, Virgil, why 
By thee neglected was this loveliest theme, 



remarks that " altho the usual objections to didactic poetry are undoubt- 
edly against this specimen, yet The English Garden was read with avidity 
and approbation." 

33 The Eng. Garden, 11, 34-35. 

24 The Eng. Garden, H, 250-259. 

25 Cp. H. A. Beers: A Hist, of Eng. Romanticism in the Eighteenth 
Century, N. Y., H. Holt & Co., pp. 123 ff. Professor Beers, who has no 
patience with didactic poets, writes : " The influence of Thomson's inflated 
diction is here seen at its worst. The whole poem is an object lesson on 
the absurdity of didactic poetry. Especially harrowing are the author's 
struggles to be poetic while describing the various kinds of fences designed 
to keep sheep out of his inclosures. 

Ingrateful sure, 
When such the theme, becomes the poet's task, 
Yet must he try by modulation meet 
Of varied cadence and selected phrase, 
Exact yet free, without inflation bold, 
To dignify that theme. 

Accordingly he dignifies his theme by speaking of a net as the ' sportsman's 
hempen toils,' of a gun as the £ fell tube 

Whose iron entrails hide the sulphurous blast, 
Satanic engine.' 

An ice-house becomes a conundrum, 

a structure rude, where Winter pounds 
In conic pit his congelations hoar, 
That Summer may his tepid beverage cool 
With the chill luxury. 



86 



The Georgic 



Left to the grating voice of modern reed? 

Why mot array it in the splendid rolbe 

Of thy rich diction, and consign the charge 

To Fame, thy hand-maid, whose immortal plume 

Had born its praise beyond the bounds of Time. 26 

A lament due not to modesty alone. 

As a treatise on the management of landscape effect, The 
English Garden is in general sensible; the poet shows the 
artist's appreciation for color and distance, and he is alive to 
the influence of fragrance, as well as of color. As a poem it 
illustrates many of the worst faults of the age. Yet Nathan 
Drake 27 pronounces it the most finished and interesting speci- 
men that the English possess in the mode of the georgic, 28 and 
Courthope, altho he grants Mason's pedantry and want of 
humor, makes the following comment: " Warton's praise of 
The English Garden as a composition in which 6 didactic poetry 
is brought to perfection by the happy combination of judicious 
precepts with the most elegant ornaments of language and 
imagery ' is not undeserved." 29 Courthope, unlike Professor 
Beers, is sometimes generous and always just: the poem is not 
entirely devoid of poetic beauty, but its main interest is that 
it begins a new fashion in the georgic, and that, more perhaps 
than any other georgic, it represents the conflicting ideas of 
the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The poet invokes 
Simplicity, declaring that his song " belongs to her " ; and he 
belies his words on almost every page. Simplicity, he an- 
nounces, is his guiding deity ; but it is the " Muse " who teaches 
how to make paths and to form fences, then " mounts to sing 
of forests." " Nature " and " Liberty," beloved eighteenth- 
century words, recur repeatedly ; but Nature must be wedded to 
Art, and Liberty must be restrained. Mason unites the roman- 

* The Eng. Garden, m, 76-85. 

"Literary Hours, London, 1820, Vol. ii, pp. 113 ff. 

18 Drake is almost as exaggerated in his praise of the English Garden as 
Ginguene' in praise of La Colt. However, an acquaintance with Dr. Drake's 
sentimental tale of Maria Arnold would prepare one for the critic's enthu- 
siastic view. 

39 Op. cit., vi, p. 29. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



87 



tic yearning for solitude and dim-lighted glades with the classic 
hatred of superstition, the romantic love of monastic ruins 
with the classic scorn of inmates of monasteries. His most 
romantic passages illustrate the neo-classic delight in moral- 
izing; and his final episode represents chiefly the worst strain 
of romanticism, the " graveyard school's tendency to revel in 
the luxury of grief." 30 

The introduction to this episode, 

Precepts tire, and this fastidious age 
Rejects the strain didactic, try we then 
In livelier narrative the truths to veil 
We dare not dictate, 

reveals the poet's weakness, and is, perhaps, the most ungrateful 
remark ever made about the eighteenth century, for surely if 
any age ever suffered in patience " the strain didactic " that 
age is the eighteenth century. 

Mason resigns the " Dorian reed " to youthful bards ; he is 
hopeless of general praise, " well repaid if they of classic ear " 
accept his song, and may turn the art he sings to soothing use 
in the ill-omened hour 

When Rapine rides 
In titled triumph, when Corruption waves 
Her banner broadly in the face of day. 

He ends with a prayer that the " long-lost train of virtues may 

30 'Concerning this episode, Mason writes to Walpole, Jan. 21, 1781, The 
Correspondence of Horace Walpole and the Rev. W. Mason, ed. by the 
Rev. T. Mitford, London, 1851, Vol. II, pp. 135 ff. : "I have much greater 
hopes of your applause on my fourth book of the English Garden, which 
is now almost finished . . . ; the subject you know is that of Ornamental 
Buildings, Menageries, Conservatories, etc., and with this I have contrived 
to interweave a pathetic story throughout, so that the whole book will be 
(if you can have any idea from the term) an Episodico-didactico-politico- 
farrago, unlike everything ever was written or will be written. The 
improvers will like it for its taste, the ladies for its tenderness; opposition 
for its Americality ; yet of this last it has no more than was absolutely 
necessary for the fable, and that so gently touched, that even Bishops will 
be forced to applaud it for its humanity, I had almost said Christianity. 
I wish it was possible to have it published on the Fast morning on this 
very account." 



88 



The Georgic 



return to save Albion's throne, her altars, and her laureate 
bowers." 

Younger English bards, Cowper, and William Knight, were 
to take up the Dorian reed with more or less success, but in the 
meantime, Delille published his poem Les Jar dins? 1 which was 
inspired by the prevailing taste for the newly-imported fashion 
of the English Garden. 

In the preface to the revised edition of 1801, Delille observes 
that his poem has a great inconvenience, that of being a didactic, 
a species necessarily a little cold, especially to a nation that, 
as has often been remarked, can scarcely endure anything but 
verses composed for the theatres. He refers to Vergil's sketch 
of gardens, and to Blapin's work, but he does not mention 
Columella nor Alamanni's book on Gardens. Of Kapin he 
writes : " Ce que le poete romain regrettoit de ne pouvoir f aire 
le poete Rapin l'a execute. II a ecrit dans la langue et quel- 
quefois dans le style de Virgile, un poeme en quatre chants, sur 
les jardins, qui eut un grand succes dans un temps ou on lisoit 
encore les vers latins modernes. Son ouvrage n'est pas sans 
elegance; mais on y desiroit plus de precision, et des episodes 
plus heureux." He criticises the too great regularity of Rapin's 
plan, and writes of the formal gardens described by the older 
poet, " Par-tout elle regrette la beaute un peu desordonnee, et la 
piquante irregularite de la Nature. . . . Ses jardins sont ceux 
de l'architecte ; les autres sont ceux du philosophe, du peintre et 
du poete." 

Delille disclaims any debt to Mason, stating that Les J ardins 
was composed long before he read The English Garden. He 
makes a defense of the " genre didactique," and of Les Jardins, 
justifying himself against those who accuse him of having 
written solely for the rich ; and he claims finally that twenty 
editions of the poem, besides numerous translations, answer the 
severest critics. 

^Nouvelle ed. Considerablement Augmentee. Paris, 1801. Besides writ- 
ing Les Jardins, Delille translated Vergil's Georgics, and wrote L'Homme 
des Champs, ou Les Georgiques Francaises. See above, p. 45. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



89 



Delille's poem, like The English Garden, is a georgic charac- 
teristic of the eighteenth century. 32 Like The English Garden 
it is a treatise on the best methods of securing landscape effects, 
and like Mason, Delille decries the old formal methods ; but the 
French poet makes a point of warning against extravagance, 
and counsels the avoidance of excess. 

Mason has an interesting passage on the history of English 
gardens in which he quotes a description of the Garden of Eden, 
and names Milton as " great Nature's herald," who yet vainly 
proclaimed her primeval honors. 33 Delille writes : 

Aimez done des jardins la beaute naturelle, 
Dieu lui-meme aux mortels en traca le modele, 

and gives an account of Milton's description of the Garden of 
Eden. 34 

Mason ends his second book with the episode of the Sidonian 
Sage 35 who gives up the peace of his retired garden to accept 
the burden of royalty. Delille ends Chant iv with the same 
story, introducing another character, the Sage's son. 

Like Mason, Delille associates the principles of painting with 
the principles of poetry, and advises the imitation of great 
landscape painters. Like Mason, he has the romantic love of 
ruins, but he does not make Mason's mistake of commending 
the building of ruins, for he is strongly opposed to anything in 
the nature of pretense. As in Mason, familiar eighteenth- 
century phrases occur repeatedly, " imitate Nature," " study 
variety," " encourage liberty " ; and the poet expresses the early 

32 Delille omits the constellation device, and the discussion of weather 
signs. 

33 The Eng. Garden, I, 386 ff. 

34 Les Jardins, I, 715 ff. Thomson is frequently called the father of 
English landscape gardening. Delille observes in a note that many Eng- 
lish claim that Milton's description of Paradise, and some passages of 
Spenser, gave rise to the fashion of landscape gardens ; but that the genre 
originated with the Chinese. He prefers, however, the authority of Milton, 
as more poetic. 

35 Abdalonimus. The fact on which this episode is founded is recorded 
by Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Justin and Q. Curtius. See Mason, op. ext., 
n. xvi, p. 402. 



90 The Georgic 

romantic ideas of the importance of the individual, the love of 
the wild and solitary, the luxury of grief. 

Much of Delille's advice is sensible. His style is clear and 
brilliant, but, altho the gardens of which he sings are designed 
primarily to appeal to the imagination, his poem makes no 
imaginative appeal. It can, however, be read with interest, 
because it mirrors popular fashions, and popular ideas ; hence 
its vogue in the poet's day. 

3. Louis de Fontanes " Maison Rustique/' Its relation to 
Delille's " J ardins " and the fashion of the English 
landscape garden. 

Louis de Fontanes' 36 georgic, La Maison Rustique, may be 
regarded in Sainte-Beuve's phrase, as " un sous-amendement 
respectueux du poeme des J ardins" 

In 1788 de Fontanes published Le Verger, with a preface in 
which he states that Delille, citing Vergil as an example to 
follow, neglects useful gardens, altho the garden of Vergil is 
' un potager.' 37 " Je n'ai sans doute rempli le plan de Virgile," 
continues de Fontanes, " mais j'ai cherche de le suivre. Au 
lieu des pares de Watheley et de le Notre, j'ai voulu tracer 
simplement, 

Le jardin du berger, du pofcte, et du sage." 

An interesting criticism of Delille follows: " Ces observations 
ne tendent point a diminuer l'admiration qu'on doit au grand 
et rare talent de M. l'abbe Delille. Le defaut principal est bien 
convert par la foule de beautes poetiques qu'il a semees dans son 
ouvrage ; les vers frangais n'ont jamais eu plus d'eclat, plus 
d'harmonie et de variete dans le rhythme. En un mot, puisque 
le style fait le poete, M. l'Abbe Delille l'est au plus haut degre." 

De Fontanes stands declared against the English garden, and 
against what he considers false attempts to imitate Nature. He 

86 CEuvres. Preeedees d'une lettre de M. de Chateaubriand. Avec une 
notice biograiphique par CM. Koger, et une autre par M. Sainte-Beuve. 
Paris, 1859. La Maison Rustique, Vol. i, pp. 187 ff. 

37 Cp. the opening lines of Vaniere's Olus. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



91 



undertakes his task well prepared by the study of many treat- 
ises on gardens, among them those of Chambers, Whateley, 
Morel and Hirschfeld. The last-named, he remarks in the 
preface to the " Verger," pretends that France has no inter- 
esting views; because of this absurd pretense the beauties of 
French vistas are emphasized. 

La Maison Rustique is merely " l'ancien Verger refondu." 
It is written in three books, " Le Potager," " Le Yerger " 3S 
and " Le Pare." De Fontanes makes use of all the georgic 
devices except proverbial sayings. He advises even the study 
of favorable and unfavorable days, the learning of the regular 
signs of the heavens, and the marking of time by the constella- 
tions. The horrors of war are dwelt upon, but de Fontanes 
being optimistic, finds that good comes even from war, and while 
he remarks on the truth that all things must die, he does not 
linger on the dreary thought of the quick passing of the best in 
human life, but emphasizes the idea that all things are reborn 
and that life continues immortal thru one's descendants : 39 

Ces freles nourrissons entre des mains habiles 
Croissent pour remplacer leurs ane§tres debiles. 
Tout meurt, mais tout renalt; et ce tronc precieux 
Que jadis a plants la main de vos aieux; 
Et que plus d'une fois en bravant leur defense, 
Dans ses jeux indiscrets outrage a votre enfance, 
Ce tronc, que ses bienfaits ont longtemps embelli, 
Par ses dons epuise, comme nous a vieilli; 
II tombe, et cede enfin son empire a l'arbuste. 
Tel, sous le poids des ans penchant sa tete august e, 
Un vieillard vertueux regrette moins le jour 
S'il laisse apres sa mort un fils de son amour, 
Son fils reproduira ses moeurs et son image. 40 

The last book ends with an interesting tribute to " La Muse 
georgique," in whose defense the poet tells the story of the 
contest in which Hesiod is given the palm over Homer. 

38 Pontano's De Hortis Hesperidum and J ohn Philips' Cyder might be 
discussed in connection with " Le Verger," but since Philips' work treats 
of the culture of the apple and Pontano's of the culture of the citron, they 
do not belong in the history of the didactic on gardens. 

39 Cp. La Colt., i, 340 ff. See above, p. 62. 

40 La Mais on Rust., Chant II. 



92 



The Georgic 



In " Le Potager," de Fontanes makes no reference to the 
efforts of Columella, Alamanni, Vaniere, and John Lawrence. 
His purpose, apparently, is to rebuke the pride of the Muse of 
poets like Mason and Delille, for after having sung the charm 
of the kitchen garden, ornamented without expense, cultivated 
from seeds, herbs, and roots brought from neighboring gardens, 
he exclaims, 

Longtemps l'orgueil du vers a craint de les nommer, 
Aujourd'hui je les chante et je veux les semer. 

Hfe dignifies the theme of humble garden plants with consider- 
able skill, making a pleasant picture of the bees among the 
thyme : 

L'ail s'annonce de loin; pardonne, aimable Horace, 

Thestilis aux bras nus, sans eraindre ta menace, 

Exprime en le broyant de piquantes saveurs, 

Pui raniment le gout et la soif des buveurs, 

Et le thym qu'en leur vol les abeilles moissonnent 

Le cresson qui des eaux recherche les courants, 

Et Tache et le earfeuil aux esprits odorants. 

The poet follows his precepts for the sowing of vegetable 
seeds by a defense of his theme. The potager is less brilliant 
in effect than the parterre, but it lasts longer. Zephyr loves it ; 
Flora cultivates it : the opening chalices drink the morning dews. 
The cabbage, whose name causes the Muse to blush, forgets this 
scorn, and enriches the winter with its tribute always green. 41 

Finally, philosophizing, the poet observes that altho humble 
products may be despised, they have nevertheless changed the 
course of destiny. 

Souvent un vegetal trouve dans les deserts, 
Un arbuste, un seul fruit, peut changer l'univers. 

Triptolemus, sowing grain, brought about civilization; the 
Gauls were called to the banks of the Tiber by the vine, and so 
on, with various illustrations to prove his point. 

41 The potato is not named, but is referred to as a vegetable more useful 
than the cabbage, a product to which much homage is due, since often it 
makes up for the denial of Ceres. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



93 



The potagers possible beauties are not neglected. The poet 
aims to bring out the point that in the kitchen garden everything 
is of use for pleasure, for nourishment, or for health. The 
proud " Mondor," contemptuous of " le potager," rich by 
" gains honteux," desires the tranquility of country life. He 
will " make " an English park, with newly-placed ruins, every- 
thing showy, expensive, bizarre. Mondor wastes his substance, 
gets into debt, the bailiff comes, and ruin follows. 42 Sensible 
afterdwellers sow lettuces on the unhappy site. 

In " Le Verger," de Fontanes pays a tribute to Delille's 
verse, altho he condemns his teachings, vain lectures on " simple 
negligence," simplicity which is only " un luxe de plus." The 
gifts of the cherry tree, the briar, etc., declares de Fontanes, 
are worth more than all useless ornaments of the pompous 
catalpa, the varnish trees of China transplanted to France at 
great cost. And in " Le Pare," the poet makes a final plea 
for the restoration of the formal garden, and the condemned 
labyrinth. 

De Fontanes does not neglect the solidity of his agricultural 
precepts. His " Orchard," in this respect, might bear com- 
parison with Philips' Cyder. 43 The French poet's mind is of 
a moralizing and scientific trend, and in certain passages he 
shows a kinship to Erasmus Darwin. The especial interest of 
his poem is its relation to other garden georgics, and to the 
eighteenth-century quarrel over regularity and form, opposed to 
the wild variety of Nature, one of the familiar phases in the 
early quarrels between classicists and romanticists. 

Socially, de Fontanes is not revolutionary in his ideas, altho 
he makes so strong a protest for simplicity as opposed to the 
bizarre and the extravagant. He has the aristocrat's contempt 
for the showy splendors of the new-rich; but inequality, he 
declares, cannot be banished from the freest state. If fortune 

42 Cp- the stories told of similar visitors said to have haunted Shenstone's 
Leasowes as a result of that poet's rash expenditure. 

43 The lines on cider and wines, the account of the Scarecrow, suggest 
the influence of Philips. 



94 



The Georgic 



or the favor of Kings has been granted yon, surround your 
retreat with greater splendor: humble, lowly gardens for the 
lowly, majestic parks for the great. 

4. Cowper s georgic on the "Garden"; William Knight's 
didactic poem, " The Landscape/' 

The third book of Cowper 's Task is a georgic on " the 
Garden," emphasizing the advantages of rural happiness and 
innocence, in contrast to the corruptions of city life. Two- 
thirds of the poem consist of moralizations, and satirical reflec- 
tions on the vanities of man; a particular outcry being made 
against the debaucheries and the luxury of the metropolis. 

Many eighteenth-century motives culminate in Cowper, but 
they are motives colored always by the poet's personality or by 
his religious belief. The power of Philosophy and of Science 
is exalted, but with Cowper Philosophy and Science must be 
accompanied by divine illumination and faith in prayer. A 
protest is made against the cruelty of the chase, but the poet is 
comforting himself by the thought that at least his tame hare 
is safe. 

In his garden Nature appears " in her cultivated trim." It 
is a garden in which a country gentleman sows and prunes and 
frames industriously. One hears the old note of triumph, pride 
in a new theme, 

To raise the prickly and green-coated gourd, 
. ' . . . . . an art 
That toiling ages have but just matured, 
And at this moment unassayed in song. 

The " prickly and green-coated gourd " is the cucumber. 44 
Cowper himself tells the reader so, and gives detailed instruc- 
tions for the growing of this delicacy in the hot-bed, and a feeling 
account of the " ten thousand dangers " that " lie in wait to 
thwart the process," 

Heat and cold, and wind, and steam, 
Moisture and drought, mice, worms and swarming flies. 



44 The Task, ni, 446 ff. 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



95 



But, " it were long, too long/' to tell them all. 

The learn'd and wise 
Sarcastic would exclaim, and judge the song 
Cold as its theme, and like its theme, the fruit 
Of too much labor, worthless when produced. 46 

^Tot having Mason's scorn of foreign plants, Cowper gives an 
account of the green-house, and of the exotic blooms that nourish 
there while the wind whistles outside ; and he has some precepts 
on the proper arrangement of flowers, practical to some extent, 
but of no help to a novice at gardening. 

The rest of the poem is a discourse against the foolish and 
wicked luxuries of the day. In satirizing the follies of the new 
fashion of landscape gardening, the poet makes an attack on 
the landscape methods of the famous Brown; methods that 
require a fortune for the following. The joy of the " enrap- 
tured owner " of the new English garden is pictured ending in 
bankruptcy. But the estate, unlike that of de Fontane's proud 
Mondor, is not to be sown with lettuces. The owner 

• Drained to the last poor item of his wealth 
. . . sighs, departs, and leaves the accomplished plan 

Just when it meets his hopes, and proves the Heaven 
He wanted, for a wealthier to enjoy. 46 

The methods of Brown are attacked at much greater length 
in a didactic entitled The Landscape, written in 1794 by Wil- 
liam Payne Knight. 47 Knight, however, appears to have been 
concerned not with the ruin of the owner of the estate, but with 
the ruin of the estate. 

The author's advertisement to the second edition of his poem 
suggests that he has passed thru troubled times since its first 
appearance. 48 With some warmth against his assailants he 

45 The Task, Bk. in, 562. 

* The Task, in, 784 ff. 

47 In 3 bks. 2nd ed. London, 1795. 

43 For a venomous spurt against Knight see Horace Walpole's letters to 
Mason, March 22, 1796, op. cit., Vol. n, p. 369. 



96 



The Georgic 



defends himself, stating that he is concerned merely to ascertain 
and to extend good taste. " As to what has been asserted of his 
preferring the opposite extremes of a Siberian desert and a 
Dutchman's garden to the grounds of Blenheim and Stowe and 
Burleigh/' he declares, " it is a misrepresentation so monstrous 
as to need no reply." One insinuation, however, cannot pass 
unnoticed. Mr. Mason's English Garden is said to have been 
pillaged to decorate the Landscape, without any acknowledg- 
ment having been made for the flowers stolen ; " but the author 
of the latter has not read the former, nor did he at the time of 
writing recollect its existence, tho he now remembers to have 
heard it spoken of some years before with that commendation 
which is due to every product of the chaste and classical Mr. 
Mason; but the candid reader must not think that he makes 
this confession thru any affected or fastidious refinement; on 
the contrary, he considers it as an instance of culpable negli- 
gence, showing that he has devoted himself to the ancients to 
the exclusion of the moderns." 

He scornfully comments on a sort of doggerel ode, " The 
Sketch from the Landscape," written in ridicule of his poem. 
He notices this doggerel only to assure the author that his 
apprehensions of giving any serious offense in such a perform- 
ance are wholly groundless, and he scornfully quotes a specimen 
of his adversary's wit, after which he remarks naively that he 
thinks it may be allowable, without incurring the imputation 
of arrogance or vanity, to add a specimen in a very different 
style of a friend's panegyric, which, as it contains not only an 
approbation, but a very happy illustration of the system of 
improvements here recommended, may be considered a part of 
the present work, the whole of which, he modestly adds, the 
reader will probably wish, had been executed by the same 
masterly hand. 49 

Mr. Knight's poem, read as a poem, is very dull. In the 

49 The panegyric, by Edward Wilmington is duly flattering, sounding 
enthusiastically the favorite eighteenth century notes, Liberty and Nature, 
" kindred powers." 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



97 



history of the georgic it is of some interest. It is clearly an 
imitation of Vergil, altho neither in spirit nor in form is it 
truly georgic. Altho the poet claims to have neglected the 
moderns for the ancients, his verse shows the influence of Pope 
and Thomson. 

The Landscape is written in closed couplets that treat rather 
of aesthetic than of practical ideas. The poet bids you follow 
Nature and avoid deformity. A passionate outburst protests 
against the 

Pedant jargon that defines 

Beauty's unbounded forms to given lines, 

and against the man " who dares not judge without consulting 
rules." 

Like Mason and Delille, Knight alludes to famous painters 
as guides in the treatment of landscape, and, like Mason, pays 
tribute to the power of Art. Mason advises the use of every 
means by which to break the effect of straight lines, and he 
advises the cultivation of the natural curve; Knight objects to 
the over use of the " pointed line," but still more to 

The path that moves by even serpentine, 
and he attacks Brown, who 

First taught the walk in even spires to move, 
And. from their haunts the secret Dryads drove. 

Thinking of Vergil's lines, 

rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes, 
flumina amem silvasque inglorius. 60 

the poet cries, 

Hence, proud ambition's vain delusive joys! 
Hence, worldly wisdom's solemn empty toys! 
Let others seek the senate's loud applause, 
And glorious, triumph in their country's cause! 
Let others, bravely prodigal of breath 
Go grasp at honor in the jaws of death: 
Their toils may everlasting glories crown, 



80 Georg. n, 485-6. 

7 



98 



The Georgic 



And Heaven record their virtues with its own! 
Let me, retired from business, toil and strife, 
Close amidst books and solitude my life. 51 

Curious lines, imitating Vergil's words, Vergil's idea of vain 
ambitions and delusive joys, 52 yet omitting the heart of Vergil's 
teaching, since the poet will flee not only from ambition but also 
from toil. 

A passage follows depicting the poet's romantic delight in 
nature; shaded caverns, thickening glooms, sunset and the 
nightingale's song. He hits at the pastoral poet's strains, 

Where lovesick 'shepherds, sillier than their sheep, 
In lovesick numbers, full as silly, weep; 

inveighs against a monkish life, and concludes his first book 
with a passage on the value of reason. 

The second book gives advice for the securing of landscape 
effects of light and shade. He warns against formal traces of 
art, the affectation of Chinese customs, and the imitation of 
ruins. He laments the passing of old days, 

When art to Nature true, 
No tricks of dress, or whims of fashion knew, 

when good taste was found among the lowest, as among the 
highest. He moralizes in phrases reminiscent of Lucretius on 
the vain pomp of wealth, but is thankful for the consoling 
powers of art to raise man in his own estimation, and concludes 
with a georgic passage on the little annoyances of life, and 

all the little ills that rise 
( • From idleness, which its own languor flies. 

The third book treats of the proper sites for trees and flowers. 
The poet rails against " the shrubberies' insipid green " and 
other barbarisms of modern taste ; contrasts British woods with 
foreign growths, and enumerates Britain's blessings. 53 

n The Landscape, Bk. i, 309 ff. 
■ Oeorg. II, 495 ff. 

63 The following highly poetical lines show a few of the ills from which 
the Briton is free: 



Didactic Poems on Gardens 



99 



The theme of foreign contrast is developed with generous 
recognition of the fact that altho Britain is so far superior to 
other countries, each has some good, since 

No state or clime's so bad but that the mind 
Formed to enjoy content, content will find. 

Moralizing on how few have power to enjoy the blessings of 
freedom, the poet draws a picture of revolutionary France, 
sympathizing with the sufferings of the king and queen. But, 
like de Fontanes, he concludes optimistically with a hope that 
from these horrors future times may see 

Just order spring and genuine liberty. 

May hence ambition's wasteful folly cease, 
And cultivate the happy arts of peace. 

The conflict between the ideas of the classicists and the early 
romanticists can be seen in Knight, as in Mason, and The Land- 
scape is of value because it is so essentially a part of its age. 

The history of garden didactics is in some respects the most 
interesting chapter in a study of the georgic, particularly of the 
eighteenth-century georgic. The intercrossing of ideas, the play 
of criticism, the presentation of popular fashions, make these 
poems an important group when studied in relation to one 
another. 

But from Columella to Knight, 54 not one poet in the group 
has fulfilled the promise of his subject. The garden is an 
alluring theme. English poets from Chaucer onward, have 
loved to dwell upon it, and even before Chaucer the writer of 
the Phoenix broke away from the Anglo-Saxon traditions of 

No poisonous reptiles o'er his pillow creep, 
Nor buzzing insects interrupt his sleep. 
Secure at noon he snores beneath the brake. 

— The Landscape, m, 265-267. 

04 Mrs. Cecil, in her bibliography, op, ext., p. 370, cites a poem called 
The Plants, by Wm. Tighe, Cantos 3 and 4: The Vine and the Palm, 
London, 1811. Cantos 1 and 2 were published earlier and not reprinted. 
Whether or not, this work is a didactic on the garden, I can not say. 



.100 



The Georgic 



battle and gloom to sing of a land of perpetual fruit and flowers. 
Bacon is more delightfully human in his Essay on Gardens than 
in anything he ever wrote, and some of the loveliest lines in 
English poetry are of gardens and of flowers. But in all the 
georgics on Gardens, there is not a passage that appeals irre- 
sistibly to the imagination or that lingers hauntingly in the 
memory. The way of the didactic poet is hard, but it is not 
impossible. The reading of every Vergilian imitation on gar- 
dens only serves to deepen the regret that Vergil neglected this 
" loveliest of themes." 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



101 



CHAPTER VI 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 

Suggesting profitable occupations for the husbandman in 
winter weather, Vergil writes, 

turn gruibus pedicas et retia ponere cervis, 
auritosque sequi lepores; turn figere dammas 
stuppea torquentem Balearis verbera fundae, 
cum nix alta iacet, glaciem cum flumina trudunt; 1 

he imagines the joyous clamour of the hunters, and the hounds, 
and the echoing groves, 

vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron 
Taygetique canes domitrixque Epidaurus equorum 
et vox adsensu nemorum ingeminata remugit; 2 

and remembering the practical value of the dog, he advises the 
husbandman, 

nec tibi cura canum fuerit postrema, sed una 
veloces Spartae catulos acremque Molossum 
pasce sero pingui. numquam custodibus illis 
nocturnum stabulis furem incursusque luporum 
aut inpacatos a tergo horrebis Hiberos. 
saepe etiam cursu timidos agitabis onagros, 
et canibus leporem, canibus venabere dammas; 
saepe volutabris pulsos silvestribus apros 
latratu turbabis agens montesque per altos 
ingentem clamore premes ad retia cervum. 3 

It has been remarked that among the developments of the 
pastoral there is found a " venatory " variety of the eclogue in 
which hunters speak instead of shepherds. 4 In the Georgics 
Vergil himself has left in embryo the didactic on Rural Sports. 
The context of the first passage cited, remarks Page, 5 shows 
that the poet had in mind the needs of the winter larder; and 



1 Georg. i, 307-310. 

2 Georg. m, 43-45. 
c Op. cit, p. 221. 



3 Georg. ill, 404-414. 

4 See above, p. 40. 



102 



The Georgic 



Sallust classes hunting and fishing among servile agricultural 
employments. 6 In Thomson's Seasons, and in other imitations 
of the Georgics, accounts of hunting are given as illustrations 
of country pastimes ; and in general, poetical treatises on hunt- 
ing and on fishing represent these occupations as the diversions 
of the wealthy, not as a means of gaining a livelihood, or of 
filling the larder. In these treatises, however, the plan of the 
Georgics is almost always followed to a certain extent; and if 
the teaching of the necessity of constant lahor is not enforced 
in the didactic poem on field sports, at least the praises of 
country life are not neglected. 

Poems on field sports may he divided into two large general 
classes : 

I. Of Hunting, represented by the cynegetics 7 and the ixeu- 
tics 8 of the ancients, which treat, at least in part, of 
hunting with dogs, and of snaring birds. 
II. Of Fishing, the halieutic 9 of the ancients. 

The cynegetic, the ixeutic, and the halieutic are all illus- 
trated in the works ascribed to Oppian of Cilicia ; and in two 
of these poems, the Cynegetica and the Halieutica, there are 
found comparisons of the three modes of the chase, the terres- 
trial, the aerial, and the marine. 

I. Of Hunting 

1. Gratius, Oppian, and Nemesianus 

Gratius Faliscus, 10 Vergil's contemporary, is, as far as I 
know, the first poet who attempted to develop the Mantuan's 
suggestions for a treatise on the Chase. Of his Carmen Venati- 

6 See W. Drummond's essay on " The Life and Writings of Oppian," 
pp. 19-20. The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xm. 
7 KwyyeTiicbs, pertaining to the chase; k6wv, dog, yyfrrjs, leader. 
8 t|6j, bird lime, tijein-ijs, a fowler, bird-catcher. 

9 a\iei/Ti>c6s, a fisher. 

10 Cp. above, p. 40. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



103 



cum 11 only five hundred and thirty-six intelligible lines have 
been preserved. 12 

Ovid names Gratius with Vergil, 

Tityrus antiquas et erat qui pasceret herbas; 
Aptaque venanti Gratius arma claret; 13 

but in the common judgment of able critics, the latter poet is 
very far removed in genius and in style from his great con- 
temporary. 

Like Vergil, Gratius begins his poem by formally announcing 
the subject, and continues immediately with the stock invoca- 
tion, addressing Diana, goddess of hunting. The first one 
hundred and fifty lines of the poem treat chiefly of the various 
modes of the chase ; but the subject is relieved by brief digres- 
sions, as, for example, an account of the dangers of the woods 
before the arts of hunting were discovered. Very appropriately, 
the poet introduces an allusion to the grief of Venus over the 
wounded Adonis; in an account of the best flax (linum) to be 
used in making twine for nets, the poet introduces references 
to the products of foreign lands; in a discussion on hunting 
with nets, he eulogizes the old Arcadius, supposed to have 
invented this mode of capturing animals. A passage on the 
wood best for spears suggests the following lines from the second 
Georgia (447-448), 

at myrtus validis hastilibus et bona bello 
cornus; Ituraeos taxi torquentur in arcus. 

In the manner of Vergil on cattle, Gratius treats of dogs. 
Various lands are mentioned famed for breeds of dogs; dogs 
best adapted for the chase are discussed in detail, their appear- 
ance, their diseases and the cures of their diseases. A digression 
is introduced on the evils of luxury, one of the few passages 

11 Ed. by K Stern, Halle, Saxony, 1832. 

12 In an eleventh c. Vienna MS., fragments of five lines follow 1. 536, but 
they are not enough to complete the poem. See TeufFel, Hist, of Rom. Lit., 
tr. by W. Wagner, London, 1873, Vol. I, p. 487. 

13 Ex Ponto, iv, 16, 33-34. 



104 



The Georgia 



in which, according to Teuffel's 14 judgment, the author rises 
somewhat higher than his usual dry and heavy style. Gratius 
describes the effect of luxury on both man and beast, enforcing 
his morals, in georgic fashion, by allusions to famous historical 
examples of the degeneracy and downfall resulting from luxury. 
Greece, says the poet, madly followed foreign guilt : 

At qualis nostris, quam simplex mensa Camillis! 
Qui tibi cultus erat post tot, Serrane, triumphos? 
Ergo illi ex habitu virtutisque indole priscae 
Imposuere orbi Eomam caput: actaque ab illis 
Ad coelum virtus summosque tetendit honores. 15 

The passage suggests a continuation of the second Georgic, lines 
532-535. 

In another digression, lines 430-466, Gratius describes a lake 
of living oil, where marvellous cures are wrought on diseased 
cattle, and the topic of the diseases of dogs is again discussed. 
Then, in the Vergilian spirit, the poet dwells upon the necessity 
of asking aid from Olympus, and describes Diana's festival. 16 

Various breeds of horses are discussed, and lands are named 
famous for the noblest steeds. The lines, 

quantum Italiae, sic dii voluere, parentes 
Praestant, et terras omni praecepimus usu; 
Nostraque non segnis illustrat prata iuventus. 

may have been meant to lead to a panegyric on Italy. But here 
the manuscript really ends, the few remaining fragmentary 
lines being hardly legible. The reader who wishes further 
versified information on the arts of the chase must satisfy 
himself in the pages of later poets. 

In the second century, A. D., Oppian of Cilicia flourished. 
Controversies have been waged concerning his authorship of the 
Cynegetica so frequently ascribed to him ; 17 but an article in 

14 Op. cit., p. 487. 

13 Carmen Venaticum, 11. 321-325. 

16 Cp. Georq. I, 338-350, of Ceres' festival — the Ambarvalia. 

17 For an interesting discussion on this question see in the section on 
" Polite Literature " in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 



Didactic Poems on Field SporU 



105 



the Encyclopaedia Britannica states that Oppian of Apamea 
(or Pella) in Syria, is the author of the Cynegetica. The poem, 
adds the writer, is dedicated to the Emperor Caracalla, so that 
it must have been written after 211. The author evidently 
knew the Halieutica, and perhaps intended to write his poem 
as a supplement to the earlier work; but in style and poetical 
merit it is far inferior to the production of the first Oppian, 
and less correct in versification. 

Translations of the Greek Cynegetica may be had in Latin, 
French, Italian, and English, 18 all, except the Latin, products 
of the eighteenth century. Only four books of the poem have 
survived. There were originally five, says Dr. Drummond, 19 
from whose analysis I give the following summary: The poet 
begins the first book with a complimentary address to Antoninus, 
and eulogizes the emperor's mother, Julia Dfomna. He declares 
himself invited by Calliope and Diana to undertake the subject 
of the chase. 20 He hears the goddess' voice exhorting him to 
arise and accompany her through a region of song where " no 
poet ever trod before." She does not wish to hear of Bacchus, 
nor of war, but desires him to sing of dogs and horses, the 
stratagems and profits of the chase, the loves, the antipathies, 
and the births of wild beasts. With true georgic pride, the poet 

xiii, " An Essay on the Life and Writings of Oppian," by Wm. Drummond, 
pp. 27 ff. The German editor of Oppian, Schneider, thinks that the Cyne- 
getics and the Halieutics were written by different authors. Belin de Belli 
or Ballu, who edited the Cynegetics, 1786, and made a translation of them, 
tried, but not very convincingly, to defend Oppian's authorship of both. 
Some critics think Oppian a general name for any writer on Marine sub- 
jects, and support their claim by etymology. 

^Didot, A. F., Poetae Bucolici et Didactici. Paris, 1862; Belin de Ballu, 
1786; Anton Maria Salvini, 1728; John Mawer, 1736, "The First Bk. of 
Oppian's Cynegetics tr. into Eng. verse with a dissertation and Oppian's 
life prefixed." Dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole. The latest edition of 
the Cynegetica seems to be that of Pierre Boudreaux. Oppien d'Apamee: 
La Chasse, Paris, 1908. 

19 " Analysis of the Cynegetica of Oppian." Transactions of the Royal 
Irish Acad., vol. xiii, Section on " Polite Literature," pp. 47 ff. 

20 In the pastoral manner Oppian here introduces dialogue between him- 
self and the goddess. 



106 



The Oeorgic 



plumes himself upon the originality of his subject, either ignor- 
ant or forgetful of the fact that Gratius Faliscus trod at least 
the beginnings of these paths two hundred years before. 

After his declaration of originality, the poet supplicates aid 
of the all-powerful ruler, and begins his theme. He names 
three modes of the chase, the aerial, the terrestrial, and the 
marine, declaring the terrestrial the more dangerous. 21 The 
poet enumerates the personal qualifications of the hunter, and 
gives an account of his armor. A passage follows on the varying 
seasons best adapted to hunting; then there are some lines on 
the arms and apparatus of the chase. After this, the reader is 
given some practical information about horses, their breeding, 
and their color, and the ideal horse is described, as in Vergil. 
To adorn the theme, mythological references are introduced, and 
the poet digresses to tell the story of a king whose horses were 
all destroyed by plague. 

The conclusion treats of the difference in breeds of dogs, with 
particular respect to their training for the chase. 

The second book begins with an account of the origin of hunt- 
ing. A eulogy on hunting follows : 

Such strenuous chiefs of old, the race pursued, 
Whom numbers followed, by its love subdued; 
For who but once the glorious sport has tried, 
In chains unbroken is forever tied. 
How sweet the hunter's sleep on vernal flowers! 
How cool his rest in Summer's sunless bowers ! 
How joyed, 'mid rocks, the short repast he shares, 
Or plucks the fruit mellifluous Autumn bears! 
His thirst in streamlets from the cave he cools, 
Or bathes his wearied limbs in standing pools. 
And in the woods the Shepherds' offering hails, 
Their loaded baskets and their flowing pails, 

an idyllic passage in the spirit of Vergil's eulogy of country life. 

An account, reminiscent of Vergil, is given of the jealousies 
and battles of bulls ; then bulls characteristic of different coun- 

a Oppian of Cilicia declares in the Halieutica that sea fishing is more 
dangerous and more difficult than hunting on land. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



107 



tries are described. Some verses follow that treat of various 
animals; and the poet tells of the animosities and affections 
existing between animals. A rather amusing passage describes 
the subus, a creature with two horns on his broad, red forehead. 
When he swims through the sea, the fishes delight to accompany 
him. He devours them, but their devotion continues uncooled. 

The foregoing passage leads to an address to " improbus 
Amor " : 

Love, dread power, invincible, divine, 

What wondrous art, what matchless might is thine ! 

The firm-set earth beneath thy arrows reels, 

And fixed is ocean when their power he feels. 

When high from earth thou speedst thy heavenward flight, 

Olympus trembles. E'en in realms of night, 

Tormented shades, in anguish as they groan, 

With shivering horror thy dread presence own, 

And though the sweets of Lethe's stream they prove, 

Ne'er drink oblivion to the power of love. 

In strength resistless spreads thy awful sway, 

Beyond where ever shot the solar ray. 

In vain with thine his arms would Phoebus wield, 

E'en Jove's winged lightnings to thy terrors yield. 

Such, dreadful god, thy shafts of keen desire, 

Heart-wounding, cureless, dipt in plague of fire, 

To lawless loves they savage beasts impel, 

And against Nature drive them to rebel. 

After this apostrophe, the poet proceeds to describe the Oryx, 
the Elephant (which is called a horned beast), and the Rhin- 
oceros. " As to the smaller animals, his muse cannot condescend 
to sing of them." 22 However, she does condescend to sing of 
the dormouse and of its winter sleep, and to name several 
others, among them the blind mole, the story of whose origin 
is narrated. 

In the third book, the poet announces that having sung of 
the hom-bearing graminivorous tribe, he will now sing of carni- 
vorous animals. He seeks to enliven his instructions by various 
tales of the lion, the lynx, and so forth. The muse is then 

22 Cp. Somerville, " Of lesser ills the Muse declines to sing, Nor stoops so 
low."— The Chase. 



108 



The Georgic 



invoked to sing of animals of a mixed nature, and the book con- 
cludes with an account of the camelopard, the ostrich, and the 
hare. 

In the fourth book, Oppian writes more in the manner of the 
georgic. He proposes to sing of the arts employed by hunters 
against their prey. These arts, he declares, are so numerous 
that no mortal can name them; they are known to the gods 
alone. He will sing of those which he has learned by experience 
or by hearsay. He then gives an account of the arms with 
which Nature has supplied wild beasts, and of their use of these 
arms. The common modes of hunting are discussed, and advice 
is given to the hunter. Various methods of trapping wild beasts 
are described, customs peculiar, for example, to the Ethiopians 
and to the dwellers on the banks of the Tigris. After an account 
of the metamorphosis of the Bacchantes into panthers, the book 
closes with a passage on the difficulties in the pursuit of the fox. 

Even in reading the analysis of the poem the influence of 
Vergil can be seen. But the poem lacks the symmetrical plan 
of the Georgics, and like the Oppian of the Halieutica, the 
Oppian of the Cynegetica seems more interested in natural 
history than in rules of practice concerning the arts of hunting. 
He was evidently influenced by his namesake, although he does 
not equal the earlier poet's skill in verse. No one has ever 
claimed that the Cynegetica of Oppian is a great poem; but 
read as an illustration of the developments in the georgic type 
it may be pronounced an interesting and valuable work. 

The next didactic on hunting of which I have any knowledge 
is the unfinished Cynegetica of Nemesianus. 23 A. J. Valpy 24 

23 Ed. Stern, 1832. Little seems known of Marcus Aurelius Olympius 
Nemesianus, except that he lived at the end of the third century A. D., in 
the reign of the Emperor Carus and his sons. Tiraboschi, op. ext., T. xi, 
441 ff., notes that two lost poems, Halieiitica and Nautica, have been 
ascribed to him. Teuffel, op. tit., vol. 2, p. 308, says that two fragments of 
a poem on the trapping of birds, and some Avell-done hexameters of the 
Pontica of an unknown author, have been attributed to Nemesianus. 

24 The Classical Journal, xxxi, p. 253 ("On the Poems of Calphurnius 
and Nemesian " ) . 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



109 



describes this fragment as " a mere dry recital of particulars 
unenlivened by the intervention of episode or moral sentiment, 
clothed indeed in language sufficiently elaborate, but far inferior 
in vigor and poetical expression to the fragment of Gratius on 
the same subject, which it otherwise resembles." The poem is 
valuable, however, the writer adds, for such information as it 
contains on the subject of which it treats. The generous-minded 
Ginguene observes that Nemesianus conserved something of the 
genius and good taste of the bom siecles. It is certainly only 
fair to say that considering the poet's choice of subject his poem 
might be worse. 

Like Gratius, Nemesianus begins by announcing his theme, 
" the labors and the joyous arts of hunting." Like Oppian of 
Apamea he evidently remembers the opening passage of the 
third Georgic. Perhaps his remembrance is partly due to 
Oppian of Apamea. Other subjects, he announces, have been 
sung by greater poets ; he has been inspired to sing the open 
fields, to go forth amid green grass, to tread upon moss yet 
untouched. He enumerates a long list of subjects now grown 
commonplace; and he promises to the sons of Carus a poem 
upon their deeds. 25 Not until line 102 does he begin to dis- 
course on his theme, which he introduces by the following 
passage, due evidently to familiarity with Vergil's Georgics: 

Due age, Diva, tuum frondosa per avia vatem; 
Te sequimur: tu pande domus et lustra ferarum. 
Hue igitur mecum, quisquis percussus amore 
Venandi, damnas lites avidosque tumultus 
Civilesque fugis strepitus bellique fragores, 
Nee praedas avidus sectaris gurgite ponti. 26 

Dogs are then treated ;, their training, their needs, the coun- 
tries from which they come, their great sagacity, etc. Then 
in the same manner the poet writes of horses, and of the varied 
implements of hunting. Here the poem abruptly ends. It was 
printed for the first time in 1534; 27 but it had received due 

25 Cp. Georg. in, 10-48. 29 LI. 97-102. 

27 At Venice, in a volume containing also the didactic of Gratius on the 
Chase, Ovid's Ealieutica, and a short poem on the chase by Cardinal 
Adrian, cp. Stern, op. cit., p. ix. 



no 



The Georgic 



honor long before the sixteenth century, for in the time of 
Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims it was used as a text-book in 
the schools. 28 

2. Medieval Poems on the Chase 

Drummond 29 suggests that in the time of Oppian, field 
sports as a subject for poetry may have been in as great favor 
as fieldwork in the time of Vergil. However, except the poem 
of Nemesianus, nothing in the way of a didactic on the chase 
seems to have survived from the time of Oppian of Apamea 
until the thirteenth century. In the Middle Ages, the stream 
of pastoral productions was " reduced to the merest trickle." 30 
From the third to the thirteenth century, the stream of georgic 
production seems to have entirely disappeared. The few pro- 
ducts of the later Middle Ages are mainly didactics on the 
chase, poems so obscure that in general, as far as the reading 
world is concerned, they are quite unknown. Yet the history 
of these poems is far from uninteresting, for they illustrate a 
striking phase of medieval life. 

In the thirteenth century, I have found no didactics in Eng- 
lish or Italian, celebrating the arts of hunting. But in France 
the theme of the chase was not neglected. At this time, love of 
the chase was a general passion among the higher classes of the 
French ; feudal barons and princes of the Church were equally 
skilled in the arts of hunting. 31 Aubertin 32 names as the 
first metrical product on the subject, a didactic written before 
1230 by a Provencal troubadour, the canon Deudes de Prades, 33 

28 Cp. Teuffel, op. ext., p. 0. 

29 Op. cit., p. 20. 

30 Cp. Greg, op. cit., p. 18. See above, p. 27. 

31 Cp. Jullien, op. cit., p. 100. 

32 Op. cit., T. II, p. 64. 

33 Deudes or Daude de Prades died before 1230. He wrote another didactic 
poem on the four cardinal sins. A. Jeanroy, in the Grande Encycl., Vol. 
xxvii, p. 531, states that E. Monaci, Studi di filologia romanza, xn, gives 
the complete text of the Auzels Cassadors. For further literature on the 
subject see Koch, Beitrage zur Textcritik der Auzels Cassadors, Munster, 
1897. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 111 

Dels Auzels Cassadors, thirty-six hundred octosyllabics in honor 
of birds of the chase. To the same period belongs an anony- 
mous Chace doto Cerf, which Jullien 34 pronounces the first 
French didactic on the art of venery. Aubertin 35 remarks of 
this poem that it is written in octosyllabics, and that it is long 
and full of technical details. Jullien 36 supplies the added 
information that the author must have been a man of profound 
learning as well as a skilled hunter. " Son style/' adds the 
historian, " atteste la connaissance la plus parfaite des poetes 
latins, et les amateurs de la chasse a course, 1 ce deduit qui les 
autres passe/ ne sauraient encore dedaigner aujourd'hui les 
preceptes qu'il a pris soin de formuler." 37 

In the fourteenth century there appear to have been neither 
English nor Italian didactics on the chase. 38 French poets, 
however, seem to have been bolder than the English and the 
Italians, probably because love of the chase was no less a passion 
in France in the fourteenth than in the thirteenth century. 
King John set the fashion for his followers, and it was at the 
king's command that the royal chaplain, Gace, or Gaces de la 
Eigne 39 wrote his cynegetic, Les Deduits de la Chasse, or Le 
Roman des Deduits, 40 a paraphrase of an older Livre du Roy 
Jlodus et de la, Heine Ratio. The writer uses the dramatic 
method of the eclogue to expound the arts of hunting with dogs 
and with birds. The two arts are represented by Amour-des- 
Chiens and Amour-d'Oiseaux, who expound by turns in order 

M Op. ext., p. 102. 35 Op. tit., p. 65. 

36 Op. tit., p. 102. 

37 Aubertin, op. tit., p. 65, names still a third poem on the chase, that is 
found in the thirteenth century, an unedited work called Dit le la Cace dou 
Cerf, or le Cerf Amoureux. It is an allegory described by the critic as 
obscure and heavy. The lover is the hunter, the lady the stag. The poem 
probably bears somewhat the same relation to the didactic on field sport 
that Tansillo's Vendemmiatore bears to didactics on field work. 

33 Carducci edited Cacce in Rima dei Secoli XIV e XV, Bologna, 1896. 
a collection of poems lyrical and idylic in character, not didactic. 

39 1310-1380. The poet accompanied King John in his captivity in Eng- 
land, where Le Roman de Deduits was begun. Cp. La Grande Encycl., T. 
6, p. 803. 

40 Cp. Jullien, Op. tit., p. 111. 



112 



The Georgic 



that the king may judge which has the better right to 
the title of " deduit," " c'est a dire de plaiser, de divertisse- 
ment par excellence." The king gratifies both with the title 
claimed. " L'oeuvre de Grace de la Bigne," says Jullien, " est 
depourvue de genie et d'agrement: cependant, elle contient quel- 
ques details interessants." Not the least interesting point 
about this medieval cynegetic is the fact that it illustrates the 
hold of the chase upon the higher clergy. 41 Gace de la Bigne 
closes his work with the lines 

Ceulx qui l'orront lire 

Que de leur grace ils veuillent dire 
Que Dieu lui pardoint ses deffaulx 
Car moult aima chiens et oiseaulx. 42 

About 1394, Hardouin, Seigneur de Fontaine-Guerin, 43 
wrote Le Tresor de Yenerie, 1284 verses in octosyllabics imi- 
tating a prose treatise, les Deduits de la Chasse, by Gaston 
Phebus de Foix. 44 Hardouin's effort seems not to have been 
very successful. Sometimes, says Jullien, the poem is hardly 
intelligible. However, altho the poet may have lacked skill and 
clarity, he did not fail in enthusiasm for the " noble art." In 
the following lines he voices the sentiment of his age : 

Tous nobles doyvent estre duit 
D'amer et suir le deduit 
De chiens, de chasse et le mestier: 
Si comme a Roys, a Dues, a Contes 
Et a Princes dont les bons contes 
Sont rementeus et retrais. 46 



41 Jullien, op. cit., p. 112, names another ecclesiastic who, before Gace, 
celebrated in his verses the noble labors of the hunter, Philippe de Victri, 
Bishop of Meaux, the author of another Roman de Deduits. I have been 
unable to identify Philippe de Victri, or to learn anything concerning the 
nature of his verses. 

42 Cp. Jullien, op. cit., 112. 

43 Jullien, op. cit., pp. 118-119. Aubertin, op. cit., pp. 64, 65. 

44 Gaston Phebus is said to have owned 1600 dogs. His book, says Jullien, 
is a treatise ex professo on dogs, nooses, bayonets, and all the other four- 
teenth-century methods of taking game. 

45 Cp. Jullien, op. cit., p. 119. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



113 



In the fifteenth century there is fonnd almost nothing in the 
nature of the georgic. The theme of the chase was not entirely 
abandoned, but in Italy the poets seem to have had no interest 
in didactics on hunting, 46 and in France there appears to have 
been little inspiration or encouragement to write of the chase. 
Louis XI loved this pastime with perhaps even greater passion 
than his ancestors. So greatly did he love it, indeed, that he 
could not bear to share his hunting ground. He deprived his 
nobles of their ancient privileges, refusing to allow them to hunt 
without his permission. " Le roi de France," writes Jullien, 47 
" voulait seul avoir le droit de prendre les animaux sauvages 
par tout le territoire." The cruelty of his proceedings against 
those who defied his will was not likely to make the theme of 
hunting popular in song. It is not surprising to find few cyne- 
getics belonging to this age. I know of only two, the first 
written at the beginning, the second at the end of the century. 

The earlier specimen, a Fragment of a Poem on Falconry, 
is printed by Halliwell-Wright in the Reliquiae Antiquae. 48 
The first lines are missing ; what is left of the poem begins with 
an account of the dangers incurred in hunting the boar and the 
stag. The writer evidently thinks the game not worth the 
candle. He demands, 

Est-ce plaisir de se combatre 

Et faire ses menbres trencher 

A un serf ou a un senglier? 

Avoir paour, peril et paine ? 

N'est-ce mie chose grevaine? 

Certes si est que que nul die; 

Mais s'il est qui le contredie, 

Que les maulx ne faille endurer 

Que cy m'aves oui nommer, 

A ceulx qui deduit de chienz aiment, 

Et qui maistre et seigneur se claiment; 



46 Lorenzo de' Medici's much-praised Caccia col Falcone is not didactic. 
Greg, op. tit., p. 37-38, places it in " the outlying realms of pastoral." 
Rossi, II '400, p. 241-242, names a poem on the chase not cited by Carducci, 
an anonymous Caccia di Belfiore. There is also a Caccia d'amore by Berni, 
which has nothing either of the pastoral or of the georgic. 

47 Op. cit., p. 131. 48 Op. cit., Vol. i, p. 310. 

8 



114 



The Georgic 



Je sui prest de le mettre por voir: 
Mais il est trop bon assavoir, 

Que deduit d'oiseaulx, monseigneur, 
Est sans mal en boute greigneur : 
Car donne proffit et plaisance 
Et bien honneste sans grevance. 49 

The writer treats " tout premier ement " of falcons ; and in 
the georgic manner describes the ideal falcon. He continues 
with a picture of the King of France setting 'out for the hunt 
with his attendants, and introduces the narrative and conversa- 
tional style of Lorenzo in La Caccia col Falcone. In the middle 
of this episode the fragment breaks off abruptly. 

At the end of the century, in the reign of Charles VIII, 
Jacques de Breze wrote a Livre de Chasse, 50 which Jullien 
describes as the charming recital of a stag-hunt in which Anne 
de Beaujeu distinguished herself by her " intrepidite ainsi que 
par ses connaissances cynegetiques." The poem appears to be 
georgic insofar as it is said to be filled with details of great 
interest to lovers of the chase. 

To the fifteenth century belongs the only versified treatise 
on hunting that I have found in English literature previous 
to the eighteenth century. It is contained in the Bohe of St. 
Albans, 51 which is believed to be the product of Dame Juliana 
Berners ; 52 but the Treatise on Venerie is unquestionably hers, 
for she signed her name at the end of it. The Treatise is not 
original, being merely a rimed version, with a few additions, 
of the older French " Venerie de Twety." 53 

49 Another version of the old quarrel between " Amours-des Chiens and 
Amour-des Oiseauloc." 

50 Ed. by Jerdme Pichon, Paris, 1888. See Jullien, op. cit., p. 131. 

B1 Printed at Saint Albans by the Schoolmaster-printer in 1486, repro- 
duced in facsimile. With an Introd. by William Blades, London, 1901. 

52 Of Dame Juliana, sometimes called Dam Julyans Barnes, much has 
been written, but little is certainly known except that she lived at the 
beginning of the fifteenth century. She was probably prioress of Sopwell, 
and she was certainly the author of one of the first printed books written 
by an Englishwoman. 

53 Twety or Twici was the chief huntsman of Edward II. Another trans- 
lation of his Venerie, evidently made in the fifteenth century, is edited in 
Reliquiae Antiquae, Vol. I, p. 149. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



115 



If Dame Juliana was acquainted with Vergil, or with, the 
poems of Gratius, and ISTemesianus, and Oppian, she gives no 
evidence of the acquaintance. Her treatise on Venerie is an 
unadorned piece of didacticism, of value to the philologist, and 
to one interested in the history of the chase, as well as to a 
student of the georgic; hut the only charm it offers to the 
modern ear is its simplicity and quaintness of expression. 

Dame Juliana makes no appeal to the Muse, and no apology 
for her subject. Perhaps she believed that the subject justified 
itself. Her reference to Trystam 54 is evidence that she takes 
no credit for originality. With an affectionate personal address 
to her reader, she begins to impart her valuable information. 

She proceeds with various practical instructions relative to 
the chase. Of the times to hunt she writes : 

Wheresoever ye fare by fryth or by fell, 

My dere chylde take hede how Tristam doth you tell 

How many maner beestys of venery there were. 

Lysten to your dame and she shall yow lere 

Fowre maner beestys of venery there are. 

The first of them is the hert, the secund is the hare 

The bore is oon of tho, the Wolff and not oon moo. 55 



54 For the book of Sir Tristam see Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte 
D' 'Arthur, bk. vm, ch. iii. 

55 Prefixed to the prose translation of the Venery de Twety, Halliwell- 
Wright, op. cit., are some rimes which the editor says do not belong to it. 
Some of these rimes correspond to Dame Juliana's opening words, but the 
writer begins with a moralization lacking in the Bolce of St. Albans: 

Alle suche dysport as voydith ydilnesse 

It syttyth every gentilman to knowe; 

For myrthe annexed is to gentilnesse, 

Qwerefore among alle other, as y trowe, 

To knowe the craft of honting and to blowe, 

As thys book shall witnesse, is one the beste; 

For it is holsum, plesaunt and honest. 

And for to sette yonge hunterys in the way, 

To venery y caste me fyrst to go, 

Of wheche IIIJ bestis be, that is to say 

The hare, the herte, the wulfhe, the wylde boor also. 

Of venery forsothe ther be no moe, 

And so it shewith here in porte tewre 

Where every best is set in hys figure. 



116 



The Georgic 



She proceeds with various practical instructions relative to 
the chase. Of times to hunt she writes : 

Merke well thys sesonys folowing, 

Tyone of grece begynneth at mydsomer day 

And tyll holi Roode day lastyth, as I you say. 

The seson of the fox at the Nativite. 

Tyll the annunciation of oure lady fre 

Seson of the Roebuck at Easter shall beginne 

The season of the Roo begynneth at Michelmas 

And hit shall endure and last ontill Candilmas. 

At Michelmas begynneth huntyng of the hare 

And lastith till midsomer ther nyll no man hyt spare. 

Like a good religious, the Dame marks her seasons not by the 
heathen constellations, but by the Christian festivals of the year. 

After some matter concerning the hare she interpolates a 
discussion between the Master of the Hunt and his man, repeat- 
ing portions of the information already given, but using a 
different source. After this she concludes with instructions 
concerning the dismemberment of various beasts. 

The text, except in the interpolated dialogue, is addressed to 
" my dere childe." Mr. Blades suggests that it was probably 
written for a mother to use as a school-book to teach her son 
reading and venery. 

3. Sixteenth-Century Didactics on the Chase. 

In France, and in Italy, sixteenth-century poets treat the 
subject of the chase more or less in the fashion of the georgic. 
It is perhaps only natural that in England the georgic muse was 
doubtful of her powers, that the Vergilian type of didactic 
poetry made little appeal in a period that throbbed with the 
poetry and the passion of the age of Shakespeare. But the 
literary history of France and of Italy was in a different stage 
of development. In Italy the poets knew that they would find 
listeners interested in any subject treated in the manner of the 
classics; in France at this time as in the three preceding cen- 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



117 



turies the poets knew that they would always find listeners 
interested in the subject of the chase. 56 

Before 1525, Guillaume Cretin or Crestin 57 took up again 
the old quarrel of the hunter s, in Le Deb at entre deux dames sur 
le passe temps des chiens et des oiseaulx, which is an eclogue 
rather than a georgic. Jean Passer at's 58 poem Le Chien 
Courant, composed at the request of Henry III, begins, at least, 
with the georgic features, eulogy of the reigning prince, and a 
formal announcement of the subject: 

Dans ces forests, ou bruit un doux zephyre, 
Je veux des chiens et de la chasse ecrire. 



Henry, grand roy, fleur des princes du monde, 
A qui Diane en la chasse est seconde, 
Donne courage et force a ton sujet 
De bien traiter un si noble sujet. 59 

According to Jullien, 60 Jacques-Auguste de Thou, " voulut 
celebrer dans la langue de Virgile et d'Horace le noble deduit 
des oiseaux." In 1581 the Hieracosophion, or De re accipi- 
traria® 1 appeared in print. This was a poetical treatise, in 
which, observes Jullien, the' author overcame the difficulties in 
his way, and produced a work that in the judgment of the 
severest critics has placed its author in the foremost ranks of 
the moderns who have devoted themselves to the sultivation of 
Latin letters. 

Claude Gauchet's 62 poem, Le Plaisir des Champs aveic la 
Veneris Volerie et Pescherie was begun before the publication 
of de Thou's Latin treatise, but it was not printed until 15 83. 63 

06 In 1575 Florent Chretien translated Oppian's Cynegetics for his young 
pupil, Henry of Bourbon. See Jullien, op. cit., p. 192. 

67 Crestin was chorister of the Sainte-Chapelle, Paris. He died c. 1525. 
Le Debat was printed at Paris, 1528, re-ed. 1723, and in the Cabinet de 
Venerie, 1882. 

68 1534-1602. 59 Jullien, op. cit., p. 184. 

c0 Op. cit., pp. 187 ff. 61 1 quote the title from Jullien. 

02 Claude Gauchet was born at Dampmartin in Champagne, c. 1540. He 
was almoner ordinary to the king, and afterwards Prior of Beaujour. 

63 The work was re-edited, 1604, with many changes and omissions. 



118 



The Georgic 



It is an interesting poem ; occasionally, as in the description of 
Beaujour, very charming. Anticipating Thomson's Seasons, 
Gauchet divides his poem into four parts, " Spring," " Sum- 
mer," " Autumn," " Winter." But although Gauchet intro- 
duces passages that are purely georgic, since they give advice 
concerning husbandry, he by no means follows the georgic plan, 
whereas Thomson, who rarely offers his reader practical advice, 
and that never directly, illustrates in his poems almost all the 
other georgic features, and manifestly imitates the plan of the 
Georgics. Q4: 

Le Plaisir des Champs is a poem of rural life, chiefly idyllic 
in character: the poet announces his subject as " the Pleasure " 
of country life. In " Spring," he depicts the happenings of a 
day, from dawn until night; painting the loveliness of the 
meadows and forests of Beau jour ; following the hounds to the 
hunt; picturing Shepherdesses confiding their dawning love 
affairs while they watch their sheep; describing the village 
evening feast ; and finally recounting a dream that visits him at 
close of day. But the pleasures in which the poet is most inter- 
ested are the pleasures of the chase. The greater part of Le 
Plaisir describes sixteenth-century methods of hunting game of 
all sorts, from the chase of the boar to the snaring of larks. 

The first book, " Le Printemps " begins: 

II est temps de quitter V6nus et son flambeau, 

L'arc cupidonien, les traicts et le bandeau, 

Les larmes, les souspirs, et par autre exercise 

Chasser les aiguillons dont nous espoint telle vice, 

II faut, d'un trac nouveau, suyvre par les forestz 

Une Diane chaste, et tout chargez de retz 

De panneaux, et d'espieux, de bourses, de cordage, 

De pants et d'autr' engins propres a tel usage, 

Dedaignans Cupidon le suyvre par les bois, 

Criantz, courantz, brossantz aux lieux les plus espoix : 

Chassons l'oisivete" et la molle paresse 

Pour suyvre allegrement ceste chaste Deesse; 

Ceste exercise gay, vainqueur d'oisivete" 

L'on appelle, a bon droict, amy de chastete. 



Prosper Blanchemain's edition, Paris, 1869, gives the original poem with 
notes citing the later changes. 
64 See above, p. 44. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



119 



Such an introduction leads one to expect a poem on the chase ; 
and the passages immediately following suggest that the poet 
has in mind the georgic model. There is the conventional ad- 
dress to Diana, goddess of the hunt : 

Sus doncq' guide mes pas, 5 vierge chasseresse; 
Donne a ma Muse effort tant que haut elle entonne 
Les plaisirs qu'en chassant par les bois on se donne. 

The poet then marks the entrance of spring by the position 
of the signs of the zodiac, and he makes a personal address to his 
friends Ronsard, Baif, and other famous men of the times. But 
here he ceases to follow the georgic type, for after describing the 
preparations made for a supper in the woods, he represents him- 
self straying alone, making a complaint on the cruelty of his 
lady, a theme decidedly pastoral, not georgic. Straying farther, 
he overhears a shepherdess singing her love troubles, and at 
sunset he returns home. 

In the following section a fox hunt is described, after that a 
badger hunt. Then in the manner of the mediaeval vision poem, 
the writer tells how he lay on the soft moss and dreamed that 
Diana came and confessed her love for him; but in the midst 
of his delight he wakened. A rabbit hunt is then described, and 
a short section is devoted to fishing. An account is given of a 
village festival with the dance; then follow two poems about 
sorrowing and love-lorn shepherds. After this, the poet over- 
hears a conversation of georgic nature between two speakers 
named Michaut and Phlippot, who describe the ravages of a 
fearful storm, which, they agree, has been sent in punishment 
for the crimes of the day. Thereupon they lament the evils of 
the time, mourning over grief-stricken France, more sorrowful 
in contrast with her former glories. 65 

Following this is a discourse between the citizen and a 
hunter, in which city and country life are compared. The hunter 
outtalks the citizen, and makes him listen to a lengthy georgic 
on the building of a country house, supplemented by detailed 

65 This eclogue was suppressed in the edition of 1604, and replaced by the 
" Discour du Chasseur et du Citadin," pp. 93 ft". 



120 



The Georgic 



instructions concerning farm life. 66 Incidentally, Gauchet 
dwells upon the happy lot of the peasant who has the means to 
live, and mentions the joys of different forms of the chase. 
Altho at one point of the discourse, the citizen exclaims of so 
much work for so little profit, 

le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle, 

he is finally convinced by the hunter, and declares that had he 
the remaking of his destiny there is nothing he could desire so 
greatly as life in the country. 

After this the poet describes his return to Beaujour and the 
first book ends. 

'No eclogues are found in the three remaining books. In 
" Summer/' harvest, harvest customs and the implements used 
for harvesting are described. In " Autumn," the poet draws a 
picture of the vintage, dwelling on the gay side, but writing 
technically of the methods of wine-making ; perhaps because of 
the difficulties of this theme he expresses himself " tant affoibles 
pour chanter tel sujet." But all three poems " Summer," 
" Autumn " and " Winter " treat chiefly of the hunt. Gauchet 
lingers on the joyous nature of field sports, but he does not 
neglect to give practical and technical information, as for ex- 
ample in " La Curee " and in " Le Foloioit or the Moyen de 
Prendre les Alouettes au miroir." 67 

Much of Gauchet's poem makes pleasant reading. The Prior 
of Beaujour rejoices so frankly in the delights of the fields that 
he wins his reader to rejoice with him. Le Plaisir des Champs 
is a work that must be highly prized in any collection of litera- 
ture on the chase ; it is of even greater value as an illustration 
of the blending of the eclogue and the georgic type in a poem 
which is a delightful example of the pastoral in the broadest 
sense of that elastic word. 

In the long list of sixteenth-century didactics in Italy there 

66 This discourse suggests an abbreviated version of Vaniere's Praedium 
Rusticum. See above, p. 68. 

67 " Summer," p. 144. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



121 



are several poems on the chase. Of Cardinal Adrian's Venatio, 
published by Aldus, 1505, I know little more than the name. 
Thomas Walsh 68 pronounces it an " elegant piece of Latinity." 
Tiraboschi has almost nothing to say about it. It was, however, 
thought worthy of publication in at least two editions, for it was 
reprinted in 1564, at Venice, in a volume with the cynegetics of 
Gratius and Nemesianus. 69 

To Guinguene I am indebted for an account of Tito Giovanni 
Scandianese's Q&ccia, published in 1556. The poem is a combi- 
nation of the cynegetic and the ixeutic, written in octosyllabics 
in four books. The first opens with a eulogy of the chase, and 
continues by eulogizing celebrated hunters of antiquity. The 
reader is then instructed in various subjects that the poet thinks 
necessary for the good hunter, such, for example, as weather 
signs. 

In the second book, the poet further imitates the classic 
models by a discussion of the appearance and the qualities of the 
good steed ; and he dwells on the countries that produce the best 
horses. Dogs are discussed, and as Vergil describes the " arms " 
with which the farmer must " conquer " the soil, so Scandianese 
writes of the " arms " that the huntsman must know how to use. 

In the third book, various modes of the chase are described, 
from the hunting of the hare to the pursuit of lions and tigers ; 
and in the fourth book precepts are given concerning the capture 
of birds of prey. 

Guinguene observes that Scandianese imitates and often trans- 
lates ancient writers, especially Gratius and Nemesianus, whose 
works having been printed as recently as 1534 were little known. 
However, Scandianese saved his readers the joyous task of 
searching echoes, for he took great pains to acknowledge his 
imitations. 

Of Natal Conti's Be Venatione libri VI I know nothing except 
that it was published in Venice in 15 5 7. 70 Pietro Angelio da 

68 Catholic Encycl., Vol. I, p. 161. 

69 See above, p. 109, n. 27. 

70 See Tiraboschi, op. tit., Tomo vn, p. 2140. 



122 



The Georgic 



Barga's cynegetic, published in 1561, has received appreciation 
at least at the hands of his countrymen, for Tiraboschi pro- 
nounces it one of the best works of modern Latin poetry, and 
Giovanni di Piccolo da Falgano admired it sufficiently to trans- 
late it into Tuscan verse. 71 

Da Barga wrote also an ixeutic in four books Sulla Uccella- 
gione, but only the first book was published, for after reading it 
the poet became so discouraged that he suppressed the remainder 
of the poem. 

Erasmo da Valvasone's Caacia, first published in 15 91, 72 is 
the last of the sixteenth-century Italian cynegetics, one of the 
most interesting poems on the subject of the hunt. It has the 
distinction of having been praised by Torquato Tasso; and, if 
one may judge from the pleasant account that Guingene gives 
of it, it is not unworthy of praise. 

La Caccia is a very long poem, five cantos, containing in all 
from seven thousand to eight thousand lines. The subject matter 
is like that of the poet's predecessors, but the theme is developed 
differently, on a framework corresponding more nearly to that 
of the Georgics. 

The first book begins with a discussion of the origin of the 
chase, which arose out of the necessity of protecting the flocks 
against wild animals, after man had lost the innocence of the first 
age and had begun to live on flesh meat. Then the reader is told 
of the degrees by which this necessary exercise became an art, 
and is informed of the kind of arms to be used in hunting. The 
subject of the varieties of hunting dogs gives opportunity for 
the stock introduction of the theme of foreign lands and the 
evils of luxury. There is introduced here, also, a moralization 
on beauty. Thruout the whole poem, says Guinguene, precepts 
and descriptions appear as episodes. Some, extended, consist of 
whole fables : these, instead of breaking the thread of the poem, 

71 See Mazzoni, Scritt. ital., t. I, par. 2, p. 747. 

72 01impio Marucci, Bergamo, Ventura, 1591; Venezia, 1593, 1602. The 
poem was written in the poet's youth, but it was not published until two 
years before his death, having been revised by him at his leisure. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



123 



are placed at the end. A long, characteristic digression is that 
by which, in the second book, the poet accounts for the origin 
of the famous hunting dogs of Charsun in Istria. Their origin 
is traced to the Argonautic expedition. In the course of their 
wanderings, the Argonauts are said to have arrived in these 
countries. Medea, touched by the hospitality of the people, uses 
her magic arts to confer upon the waters of Istria properties 
that give marvellous virtue to dogs that drink from the rivers 
flowing from the source of the Timavus. Incidentally, there is 
introduced in the story a priest who predicts the glory of Venice, 
and the prosperity of Istria under the house of Austria, a not 
unskillful treatment of a favorite georgic convention. 

Simplicity of heart and Christian piety are enumerated 
among the virtues of a good hunter, who should never fail to 
hear mass, and who should be especially mindful of the Virgin 
Mary. The hunter who invokes her aid may be sure of success, 
and he needs have nothing to fear from winds or storms, nor 
from magicians nor sorcerers. If the hunter neglects to pray, 
if he becomes a libertine and impious, he risks punishment such 
as befell one Theron, a youth beautiful and pious, famed for his 
skill at the chase. Travelling abroad he became corrupted, and 
returning home scandalized the comrades whom he had once 
edified. Taking part in a boar hunt he was cruelly killed by 
the boar, an evident punishment, to which the poet applies the 
lesson of Vergil, 

Imparate giustitia, o genti humane, 
E non spregiar le Deita Sovrane. 73 

In the fourth book, the poet forgets his Christian precepts ; and 
exhorting noble youths to all the ardour that the chase demands, 
he tells them that they need not fear that dust, sunburn, or 
fatigue will make them less attractive to the fair ; for Hippolytus 
set afire Phaedra, Adonis Venus, Cephalus Aurora and so forth. 
Poetic illustrations, remarks Guinguene, but somewhat far from 
the Ave Maria and the Mass. 

Following this the poet discourses further of various modes 

73 Cp. Discite iustitiam moniti et non temnere divos {Aen. 6, 620). 



124 



The Georgic 



of the chase, and of various sorts of weapons ; then he expresses 
a wish that it were possible for young hunters to encounter in 
the woods the hind of Arthur with its ruby horns (it seems 
unnecessary to remember that hinds do not possess horns), its 
iron feet and its hair golden as the fleece of Phryxus and Helle. 
This leads to the tale of an adventure of King Arthur who 
followed this enchanted hind. It appears, says Guinguene, that 
in a didactic poem, Valvasone desires to rival Bojardo and 
Ariosto. The episode may seem far-fetched continues the Trench 
critic, but it is brilliant in itself " revetu de riches couleurs, et 
inele de legons de sagesse dont le poete assure que le roi Arthur 
fit son profit, et dont chacun roi ou sujet, peut faire aussi le 
sien." 

The fifth book of La Caccia treats of birds of prey used in the 
hunt. The subject is treated in the usual manner; varieties of 
birds are named, and directions are given for breeding them and 
caring for them. The book ends with a fable from Ovid's Meta- 
morphoses, the story of Nisus and Scylla. 

The style of the poem, says Guinguene, is in general poetic 
and animated, the*rime and the octave well used. The reading 
may f atigue, but it will not bore the reader. Valvasone shows a 
taste less pure than that of the Api, La Coltivazione and La 
Nautipa, but after them this didactic on the chase deserves a 
distinguished place. 

4. Eighteenth-Century Didactics on the Chase. 

John Gay, who fathered English comic opera, and delighted 
the world with the charming freshness of The Shepherd's Week, 
tried his skill, also, at the georgic. In this type, as in the 
Beggar s Opera, he was a pioneer ; for he appears to have led the 
English poets who wrote didactic verses on rural sports other 
than fishing. Dame Juliana Berner's rimes on Venerie 74 hardly 
count, even if one charitably reckons her among the poets. 

Gay's poem, Rural Sports, A Georgic, 15 was published in 

74 See above, pp. 114 ff. 

75 The Poems of John Gay, The Muses Library, N. Y., E. P. Dutton & Co. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



125 



1713. It is in two cantos written in rimed couplets. To a 
certain extent, the framework of the Georgics is followed, and 
Vergil is certainly imitated ; but Gay does not seem to have in 
mind earlier writers on the chase. His poem lacks the stock 
opening of the georgic;, it begins with an address to those who 
have known the sweets of rural life, and the poet continues in 
true georgic spirit, by informing the reader that he himself has 
been immured in the town, the home of faction, scandal, and 
other kindred evils peculiar to the eighteenth-century town. He 
will now chose a calm retreat. 

Where fields and shades, and the refreshing clime 

Inspire the sylvan song and prompt my rhyme. 

My Muse shall rove through flow'ry meads and plains, 

And deck with rural sports her native strains, 

And the same road ambitiously pursue, 

Frequented toy the Mantuan swain and you, 

" you " meaning Mr. Pope, to whom the poem is dedicated. 

At dawn, the poet takes his way to watch the farmer's early 
care " in the revolving labors of the year." 76 He describes very 
pleasantly the farmers' work in the morning in early spring, 
tells the reader how at noon, when bright Phoebus gains the 
height of Heaven, he betakes himself to the forest, where he can 
enjoy the sweets of evening. Vergil appears to satisfy the poet 
quite as well as Nature, if one can judge by the lines, 

Here I peruse the Mantuan's Georgic strains, 

And learn the labours of Italian swains; 

In ev'ry page I see new landscapes rise, 

And all Hesperia opens to my eyes. 

I wander o'er the various rural toil, * 

And know the nature of each different soil: 

This waving field is gilded o'er with corn 

That spreading trees with blushing fruit adorn: 

Here I survey the purple vintage grow, 

Climb round the poles, and rise in graceful row: 

Now I behold the steed curvet and bound, 



Cp. Georg. n, 401-402. 

redit agricolis labor actus in orbem 
atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus. 



126 



The Georgic 



And paw with restless hoof the smoking ground ; 
The dewlap'd bull now chase along the plain, 
While burning love ferments in ev'ry vein. 



The careful insect 'midst his work I view, 
Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew; 
With golden treasures load his little thighs, 
And steer his distant journey through the skies; 
Some against hostile drones the hive defend; 
Others with sweets the waxen cells distend: 
Each in the toil his destined office bears, 
And in the little bulk a mighty soul appears. 

At evening the poet strays to " Neptune's bounds " to take 
farewell of parting day, lingering over a delightful description 
of the sunset. Night oppresses him with the sense of his limita- 
tions ; but in the next passage, he cheers himself with the thought 
of the joyous sports afforded by the revolving seasons. 

Finally the reader arrives at the long deferred account of 
" rural sports." Spring, declares the poet, is the time to fish, 
and, thereupon, he begins to instruct his reader how to catch the 
" finny brood," giving a description of the modes of trout 
fishing and salmon fishing, the latter a very unpleasant picture. 
The " scaly prey " are to be saved from the hostile jaws of the 
ravening otter that they may be delivered over to the mercy of 
man ; and the concluding passage loftily declares, 

Around the steel no tortured worm shall twine, 
No blood of living insects stain my line; 
Let me, less cruel, cast the feather'd hook 
With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook, 
Silent along the mazy margin stray, 
And with the fur -wrought fly delude the prey. 

The second canto begins by calling upon the " sporting Muse " 
to draw the flowing rein, lest the reader tire of the " watery 
song." 

The hunter is then admonished to refrain from the chase until 
the golden corn has been reaped, lest the plowman's labor be 
rendered vain. However, if in the meantime the bosom glow 
for sylvan sport, there may be permitted the chase of the hare. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



127 



Carried away by enthusiasm for his subject, the poet cries of 
the pursuing hound, 

She turns, lie winds, and soon regains the way, 
Then tears with gory mouth the screaming prey; 

and, as if quite unconscious of the cruel ugliness of the picture 
he has just painted, continues, 

What various sport does rural life afford! 

What unbought dainties heap the wholesome board! 

An interesting commentary, not so much on Gay's lack of feel- 
ing, as on the laws of nature and of life. 

Being wise enough to doubt his skill, the poet leaves the fox 
hunt and the pursuit of the stag for worthier hands. In an 
episode praising the joys of country life he imitates Vergil's " 
fortunatos nimium," 77 and contrasts the health and happiness 
of the rural maid with the courtly dame tormented by the spleen 
amidst the luxuries and disease-breeding idleness of city life. 
Gay's rural maid ; like Dodsley's Patty, 78 seems even more 
blessed than the heroine of the pastoral, for she lives in a Golden 
Age of unclouded happiness, from the days of youth and love, 
thru the joys of maternity and cheerful toil, 

Till age the latest thread of life unwinds. 

Then while the poet is yet convinced that his picture is true, he 
exclaims, 

Ye happy fields, unknown to noise and strife, 
The kind rewarders of industrious life; 

Farewell, amusing thoughts and peaceful hours. 

So ends the mediocre poem that might be called an introduc- 
tory chapter in the history of the eighteenth-century cynegetic. 
Thomas Tickell, in his versified Fragments on Hunting™ 
claims to be the first to sing of this subject in British verse. He 
was probably in ignorance of Dame Juliana Berner's Venerie; 

" Georg. n, 458. 78 See above, p. 70. 

"Chalmer's Eng. Poets, vol. XI. 



128 



The Georgic 



his poem was certainly written before iSomerville's Chase, which 
was published in 1735; and as far as Gay is concerned Tickell 
is justified in his claim, for Gray does not treat technically of 
hunting. He does, it is true, give precepts concerning the fisher- 
man's art, but he contents himself with merely describing certain 
moments of the chase. 

Tickell makes no mention, so far as I know, of any indebted- 
ness to Gratius or Oppian lor Nemesianus, and there is no evi- 
dence that he was acquainted with the French and Italian poems 
on the chase. He imitates Vergil closely, and various passages 
of the Fragment are clearly echoes of the Georgics. 

The beginning is a statement of the subject, the stock opening 
of the Vergilian didactic ; it is followed by the poet's declaration 
that he is the first to treat his theme in British verse. Dogs 
are next discussed in the fashion of the earlier writers of cyne- 
getics, as cattle are sung in the Georgics. The ideal dog is 
described, as is the ideal bull in the third Georgia, and Vergil 
is again imitated in a spring passage. 80 The Golden Age, says 
the poet is a time when the lion and the lamb lay down together, 
but a iour daring mother broke the sole command, then wrath 
came down." 

Referring to Nimrod, the first hunter, Tickell exclaims, 

Ah! had he there restrained his tyrant hand! 
Let me ye powers an humbler wreath demand. 
No pomps I ask, which crowns and sceptres yield, 
Nor dangerous laurels in the dusty field; 
Fast by the forest and the limpid spring, 
Give me the warfare of the woods to sing, 
To breed my whelps and healthful press the game, 
A mean, inglorious, but a guiltless name. 

One more patent imitation of Vergil's prayer to the Muses to 
grant him, ' inglorious, the love of woods, and fields and 
streams.' 

The Fragment ends with a reference to great Mario, and to the 
third and f ourth Georgics. 

80 Cp. Georg. n, 325 ff.; Georg. m, 242 ff. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



129 



Tickell's work is of no importance as a poem, nor as a georgic, 
but it is interesting as the beginning of the first effort at an 
English cynegetic iof the formal Vergilian type of didactic 
poetry. 

William Somerville' s Chase, 80 * written in 1735, is, like Gay's 
Rural Sports, professedly a georgic. In his interesting preface, 
Somerville writes, " I have intermixed the preceptive parts with 
so many descriptions and digressions in the Georgic manner, 
that I hope they will not be tedious." 

The Chase is, so far as I know, the ionly complete poem on the 
subject in English. In his preface Somerville mentions Oppian 
and Gratius and Nemesianus. He remarks that one might have 
expected to see the subject treated in full in the third Georgic 
of Yergil ; and he quotes Vergil's lines on dogs and on the hunt. 
After some further observations ion the chase he remarks, " The 
gentlemen who are fond of a jingle at the close of every verse, 
and think no poem truly musical but what is in rime, will here 
find themselves disappointed. If they be pleased to read over 
the short preface before the Paradise Lost, and in Mr. Smith's 
poem in memory of his friend Mr. John Philips . . . they may 
be of another opinion. Eor my own part, I shall not be ashamed 
to follow the example of Milton, Thomson, and all our best 
tragic writers . . . 

But I have done 

Hark, away, 
Cast far behind the lingering cares of life, 
Cithaeron calls aloud, and in full cry 
Thy hounds, Taygetus ; Epidaurus trains 
For us the generous steed; the hunter shouts, 
And cheering cries assenting woods return. 

(Georg. m, 42-45.) 

The Chase is in four books, very well planned, and if one be 
interested in the subject, it is easy to understand how the poem 
passed thru nine successive editions gotten up with all the attrac- 
tions that the publishers of the time could offer. And even altho 
the reader is not interested in the subject, if he is just, he must 

*° a It. Anderson, The Wks. of the British Poets, vol. 8, 445-544. 

9 



130 



The Georgic 



still admit with Dr. Johnson that " to this poem praise can not 
be totally denied." 

The Chase, as Somerville states in his preface, follows the 
conventions of the georgic. Since the poet does not treat of 
hunting as a rural occupation necessary for the preservation of 
peace and life, but as an amusement of the country gentleman, 
he may be said to use the pastime motive of the Georgics as his 
subject; Vergil's central theme, the glorification of labor, is left 
untouched. But all the other important features of the georgic 
are illustrated in the poem, from the stock opening to the long 
narrative episode at the close. 

Somerville imitates the ancients in his treatment of his 
theme ; but he knows his subject, for he was a mighty hunter in 
his day, and he recalls realistically the scenes in which he once 
bore a joyous part. He dwells on the precepts of his art quite 
as lovingly as does Vergil. He regards the chase as a noble art, 
and he teaches the necessity of following it according to rule 
1 and order, with a certain gentlemanly restraint very different 
from that of our rude forefathers. 

Throughout, Somerville shows a great delight in the outdoor 
world, particularly the world of early morning; and althu his 
descriptions of nature are often very conventional, he frequently 
shows that he does not see " thru the spectacles of books." His 
weather signs are clearly drawn from a knowledge of English 
climate, not from the mere reading of Vergil's ' certain signs.' 

Somerville thinks that his theme needs no apology, but he 
believes that there are themes below the dignity of the Muse, 
for after telling of the care and training of hounds he writes, 

Of lesser ills the Muse declines to sing, 

Nor stoops so low; of these each groom can tell 

The proper remedy. 

A piece of poetical commonsense highly to be recommended. 

The critics cannot say of Somerville as they say of Thomson, 
that he overlooks the cruelty of nature ; for the cruel laws of life 
furnish the motive whereby the poet justifies the hunt. He does 
not seem to have ideals even about the Golden Age, for in speak- 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



131 



ing of the beasts that should be preserved and of those that 
should be destroyed, he writes, 

Should not man's care 
Improve his growing stocks, their kinds might fail, 
Man might once more on roots and acorns feed, 
And through the desert range shivering forlorn, 
Quite destitute of every solace dear 
And every smiling gaiety of life. 

The picture seems to owe something to Thomson's description of 
the savage state of man before the coming of Iudustry, 81 and is 
the nearest approach that Somerville makes to Vergil's theme of 
the reward of toil. 

Somerville has no sympathy with the sentimentalists who 
think that it is cruel to kill animals ; he thinks it cruel not to 
kill when it is necessary to do so. But he holds with the 
eighteenth-century philosophy that war is guilt, and seems to 
feel that in the chase man can satisfy with innocence the passions 
that would otherwise lead to the oppression of the human race. 
In the concluding lines of the second book he cries, 

Ye proud oppressors, whose vain hearts exult 
In wantonness of power, 'gainst the brute race, 
Fierce robbers like yourselves, a guiltless war 
Wage uncontrolled: here quench your thirst of blood; 
But learn from Aurengzebe to spare mankind. 

Yet, that he has some sympathy with the brute race may be 
seen from the conclusion of the fourth book in which he ad- 
dresses a eulogy on mercy (perhaps a little inconsistent in a 
poem on the chase) to the prince who saves the brave stag from 
the hungry pack. 

Somerville feels that God's gifts to man are good. He believes 
in the immortality of the soul, 82 and reverences deeply the 
Supreme Power. In his delight in remembering the joys of 
exercise and health, he reveals his personality, strong and vigor- 
ous even in old age. But for all his individuality he does not 

81 Autumn, 57 ff. 

82 See the opening lines of Book rv. 



132 



The Georgic 



scorn to color his pages with sentiments taken directly from the 
classics. His address to " the happy ranger of the fields/' be- 
ginning, 

happy, if ye knew your happy state 

is only another imitation of Vergil's " O fortunatos nimium,'' 83 
and the concluding prayer, as Myra Reynolds points out in her 
Nature in English Poetry, 83 * is closely modelled after the con- 
cluding lines of Thomson's Autumn, in which Thomson imitates 
Vergil's prayer to the Muses. 

Somerville's Chase has been read, not only with interest, but 
with enthusiasm by lovers of the noble art. Prose writers on 
rural sports frequently pay Somerville the compliment of 
quoting his spirited lines. 84 Yet when the reader, indifferent 
to the subject of the chase, has been just enough to agree with 
Dr. Johnson that " to this poem praise can not be totally 
denied," pardon may be granted for the honest statement that 
Somerville's effort is to be praised more for truth than for 
poetry. 

I am not acquainted with any other English poet of the 
eighteenth century who imitated Somerville in writing of the 
chase. Vaniere treats the subject in the Praedium Pusticum, 
writing of different modes of pursuing different animals, from 
the hare to the wolf, the lion, and the tiger; and in 1775, an 
Italian poet named Antonio Tirabosco 85 published a poem 
entitled L'JJ ccellagione, but I know nothing more than the name 
of the work. 

Mazzoni 85a names three nineteenth-century Italian poems on 
the chase, written by Lorenzo Tornieri, who translated Vergil's 
Georgics. The subjects of the poems are La caccia delle allodole 
col paretaio, La caccia delle quaglie, La caccia della lepre. In 

83 Georg. II, 458. 

834 Treatment of Nature in Eng. Poetry from Pope to Wordsworth, Uni- 
versity of Chicago, 2d ed. 

84 See, for example, Daniels, op. cit. 

85 See Concari, op. cit. 
85a Op. cit., p. 78. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



133 



bow far they are georgic in character, valuable in content, I am 
unable to say, 

In the Edinburgh Review, 1808-09, 86 there is a very interest- 
ing critique of an anonymous nineteenth-century English poem 
on Fowling. The writer in the Review is, evidently, a fair and 
generous person, who does not believe that didactic poetry jus- 
tifies itself; but who declares, nevertheless, " Though poetical 
talents are misapplied ... to subjects of no powerful or reason- 
able interest, yet those talents may still be displayed upon such 
subjects. Accurate and lively description will always be de- 
lightful, and no subject can be fairly denominated unpoetical 
which holds out an opportunity to expatiate on the beauties of 
nature." Comparing the poem with that of Somerville, the 
reviewer concludes that the subject of Fowling is more romantic, 
that of the Chase more picturesque. Enough of the anonymous 
poem is quoted to give some idea of its merit, and to show that 
to a certain extent, at least, it is georgic in character, since it 
contains moral reflections, and the familiar invective against 
the shooting of grouse, partridges, pheasants, woodcock, snipe 
and ducks. In the first book, the poet has the lonely heaths for 
city life. In the five books of the poem are treated successively 
his background, in the last the equally wild loveliness of marsh 
and stream. The scenery in the latter, says the reviewer, is 
" most engaging.' 7 He adds that the passages he cites are not 
offered as specimens of exquisite or powerful poetry; but he 
finds in the whole poem the merit of truth and simplicity. The 
review seems due chiefly to the generous disposition of the 
writer, who is sure that there may be readers to whom the poem 
may afford more pleasure than it has done to himself. He 
concludes with the remark that the author of this poem (one 
hundred and fifty pages on, the subject of fowling) might do 
something better than make poems on field sports. 

After the first decade of the nineteenth century no other 
English poet appears to have had the courage to expend his 

86 Pp. 69 ff., "Fowling, a Poem in Five Books descriptive of Grouse, Par- 
tridge, Pheasant, Woodcock, Duck, Snipe Shooting.'* 12mo., pp. 150. 



134 



The Georgic 



labor or his talent on a didactic on field sports ; but as late as 
1844, tbere was published in Paris a volume by Theophile 
Deyeux entitled La Chassomanie. To the student of the didactic 
poem on field sports this book is as interesting as it is curious, 
and even the casual reader might find it worth inspection. The 
author follows no definite plan; his arrangement of his sub- 
ject matter suggests somewhat Claude Gauchet's Plaisir des 
Champs. 87 There is, however, no division according to the 
seasons, nor are there eclogues georgic in character such as are 
found in Gauchet. The resemblance lies in the number of poems 
of varying meter and length on such subjects as the hunting of 
the hare, the snaring of the lark with mirrors, and so forth. The 
chief digression consists of a number of reflections inserted as 
the contents of the hunter's notebook. 

Deyeux appears to have been little influenced by earlier 
writers on the subject of the chase, nor does he seem to have 
Vergil in mind. He writes evidently from experience and from 
love of his subject, so that his verses, altho lacking poetic heights 
of imagination, have a certain pleasant simplicity and individu- 
ality. To the general reader, much more interesting than his 
detailed accounts of the pursuit of wild animals is the digres- 
sion on the hunter's meditations, and his defense of the hunter's 
character. The hunter, remarks the poet, is accused of being 
gross and cruel; greatly is he misunderstood. The very life 
that he lives in the pure air of woods and fields develops in him 
admirable modes of thought, and in the days when it rains, 
perhaps for a week at a time, he is given to fruitful meditations. 
Consult his notebook and see. The "Chassomane's " reflec- 
tions are prefaced by the following remark : 

Tout homme doit de front mener deux existences, 
L'une est toute physique, et simultaneement 
L r autre est toute morale et dicte les depenses 
Dont le compte est solde par le temperament. 88 

Then occur a series of meditations on Pride, Modesty, Anger, 

87 See above, pp. 117 ff. 

88 See "Le Carnet du Chassomane," La Chassomanie, pp. 115 ff. 



Didactic Poems on Field 8 ports 



135 



Deception, Love, Hate, and so forth. Particularly interesting 
are Deyeux' verses on " La Chasse et la Guerre." They sound 
an opinion quite at variance with the familiar anti-war senti- 
ments of the poets of the eighteenth century, the sentiments 
characteristic of almost all georgic poetry. The following lines 
are sufficient to illustrate the poet's point of view : 

On trompe la soci£te, 
Depuis qu'un rheteur entete 
S'en est venu, d'une voix samte 
Proclamer dans la France eteinte, 
Qui sentit fremir son drapeau, 
Que la guerre etait un fleau. 
Mais cette erreur, elle est profonde, 
La guerre est l'essence du monde, 
Elle est la volonte de Dieu, 
Qui partout allume le feu. 89 

How many other would-be poets may have followed in the 
footsteps of Deyeux I do not know. In Les georgiques chre- 
tiennes, 20 Francis J amines has some passages descriptive of field 
sports, but Deyeux' Chassomanie is the latest complete work on 
the subject of the hunt with which I am acquainted. In these 
days when one can read of little else than human warfare, it 
would be a brave writer who would attempt to find an audience 
for poetic efforts on such a theme. 

II. Of Fishing. The LIalieutic. 
1. Oppian of Cilicia. 

In the Qeorgics, Vergil alludes to the fisherman's art, 1 which 
he mentions among the results of the passing of the Golden Age. 
Father Jove saw fit to make men's wits keener by the hardships 
of life. Hence mortals learned to fish in rivers and to drag 
their dripping nets thru the sea. The subject of the didactic 
poem on fishing may thus be said to have been proposed. 

Theocritus set the fashion of the piscatory eclogue in Idyll 

89 La Chassomanie, p. 196. 90 See above, pp. 46-47.1 

1 Georg. i, 141-142. See above, p. 41. 



136 



The Georgic 



XXI. But not until the time of Sannazaro do any notable poets 
seem to have availed themselves of this model. The earliest 
extant poems on fishing, the fragmentary Halieutica ascribed to 
Ovid, and the Halieutica of Oppian appear to have been sug- 
gested by Vergil, not by Theocritus, since they are didactic 
rather than idyllic in character. 

Defending the piscatory poets against their assailants, Mr. 
J ones remarks in the " Account of the Life and Writings of 
Oppian " prefixed to the English translation of the Greek poet's 
Halieutics, " If the Waters contain in them nothing but what 
is uncomfortable and dreadful, 'tis very strange that Ovid, who 
naturally loved what was soft and agreeable, should have made 
any attempt in this kind." Waiving the question of the discom- 
fort and dread of the waters, the critics are still divided regard- 
ing Ovid's authorship of the fragmentary Halieutica, which 
those who ascribe it to him suppose to have been written during 
his banishment on the shores of the Euxine. 2 Whether or not 
Ovid wrote this fragment 3 the critics seem agreed that it was 
certainly written in the time of Ovid. In this poem is found 
for the first time the comparison between hunting, fowling, and 
fishing. The poet prefers his own occupation because of its 
freedom from the dangers that attend the chase. 4 He begins to 
describe his art, then advises his disciple not to put far out to 
sea, but to pursue the sport on shore. A description of the 
proper tackle, upon which so much depends, is promised, and 

2 See Walton and Cotton, The Complete Angler. With a bibliographical 
Pref. by the American Editor. N. Y., John Wiley, 1852, pp. xv ff. Among 
the lost works of antiquity on the subject the " American Editor " mentions 
the following: Csecilius' or Cecilius' De Be Piscatoria, an epic poem; Pan- 
cratius the Arcadian's Alieutica; Numenius of Heraclse's Alieuticos, an 
elegiac poem; Posidonius of Corinth's Alieutica, an epic poem; Seleucus of 
Emesa's Aspalieutica, an epic; Alexander the ^Etolian's Aliens, an epic 
poem. 

3 There is usually prefixed to this work another brief fragment, entitled 
Pontica, supposed by some to be the remains of Nemesian's work on fishing. 
After Ovid's fragment is sometimes printed another of so little worth that 
the vexed question of its authorship is hardly worth considering. 

4 Cp. the views of Nemesianus and of Oppian of Cilicia. See above, p. 106. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



137 



there is a brief description of the varied play of fish after they 
are hooked, which draws from the American editor of Walton 
and Cotton 5 the exclamation, " There is such a spirit in these 
passages that we lament again and again the absence of those 
which are lost to us." 

The most valuable work of antiquity on the subject of fishing 
is the Halieutica of Oppian of Cilieia, 6 a poem that has met with 
extravagant praise as well as with the coldest neglect. 

The Halieutica was dedicated by Oppian to the Emperor 
Severus and his son Caracalla. Thus the poet follows the Ver- 
gilian tradition. And if report may be believed, the public 
reading of Oppian' s poem was not less appreciated than the 
reading of Vergil's poems before Augustus. Oppian is said to 
Jiave written the Halieutica during his life on the island of 
Melita, whither his father Agesilaus had been exiled by Severus. 
The Roman Emperors, according to the account of Dr. Drum- 
mond, 7 were interested in fishing, and Oppian in writing his 
poem on this subject hoped to secure the emperor's favor and a 
pardon for his father. Dr. Drummond hazards the remark, " If 
Georgics were a favorite topic in the days of Vergil, field sports 
may not have been less so in the days of Oppian." Whether 
because of the popularity of the subject or for some other equally 
interesting reason the Halieutics are said to have been read 
aloud in the temple of Apollo. Severus and his family were 

8 Op. ext. 

6 For the identity of Oppian, see above, p. 104. There have been many 
editions and translations of the Halieutica. Among them may be mentioned 
the Florence edition of 1515, the Aldine, 1517, with the translation of L. 
Lippius, first published 1447; Schneider's edition, 1776, which includes the 
Latin prose translation of Turnebus. Among French translations are those 
of Florent Chretien, Paris, 1575; Belin de Ballu (in prose), Strasburg, 
1787; E. J. Bourquin, 1877. The only English translation that I know is 
the valuable version of Diaper and Jones, Halieutics, of the Nature of Fishes 
and Fishing of the Ancients. In five books. Translated from the Greek. 
With an account of Oppian's Life and Writings and a Catalogue of his 
Fishes. Oxford, 1722. Books I and II translated by Mr. Diaper, Books 
III, IV and V by John Jones, M. A. 

7 " The Life and Writings of Oppian." See above, p. 104, n. 17. 



138 



The Georgic 



present ; Oppian secured their favor by his eulogistic passages, 
and the Emperor offered him any reward that he might ask. 
Pleased by the filial piety of the poet, the Emperor not only 
granted pardon to Agesilaus, but gave Oppian besides a status 
for each of his " golden " verses. 

In the English translation the poem is divided into two 
parts. The first and second books " translated by Mr. Diaper," 
treat of the " Nature of Eishes " ; the third, fourth, and fifth 
books, " translated by John Jones, M. A.," treat of the " Fish- 
ing of the ancients." 

The georgic model is followed in the opening passages, in 
which the poet announces his subject and addresses the prince 
in the following lines : 

I sing the Natives of the boundless Main 

And tell what Kinds the wat'ry Depths contain. 

Thou, Mighty Prince, whom farthest Shores obey, 

Favor the Bard, and hear the humble Lay ; 

While the Muse shows the liquid Worlds below, 

Where throng'd with busie Shoals the Waters flow ; 

Their diff'ring Forms and Ways of Life relates; 

And sings their constant Loves, and constant Hates; 

What various Arts the finny Herds beguile, 

And each cold Secret of the Fisher's Toil. 

Intrepid Souls! who pleasing Rest despise, 

To whirl in Eddies, and on Floods to rise; 

Who scorn the safety of the calmer Shore, 

Drive thro' the working Foam, and ply the lab'ring Oar, 

The Deeps they fathom, search the doubtful Way, 

And thro' obscuring Depths pursue the Prey. 

The three modes of the chase are described, 8 but Oppian finds 
the pursuit of sea creatures more fraught with dangers than the 
pursuit of creatures of the land and of the air. 

The Fishers labor not on certain ground 
But in a leaky boat are tost around; 

they face the fury of the winds and waves, they meet — 

. . . Vast Whales, and monstrous nameless Kinds, 
The slender-woven Net, vimineous Weel, 



8 See above, p. 136. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



139 



The taper Angle, Line and barbed Steel, 

Are all the Tools his constant Toil employs; 

On Arms like these the Fishing Swain relies. 

But Fishers live altho exposed to Harms, 

They have their Pleasures, and the Sea its Charms. 

After a passage on the Royal fishing equipment, the poet in 
conventional georgic fashion addresses Neptune and all the 
(Ocean deities, and then, like so many of his brother singers, 
comments upon the difficulty of his task. 

Like most georgic poets, Oppian decries war. The f ollowing 
lines suggest Vergil, but they read even more like the pacifist 
sentiments of the eighteenth century: 

Fondly we blame the Rage of Warring Fish, 
Who urg'd by Hunger must supply the Wish; 
When cruel Men, to whom their ready Food 
Kind Earth affords, yet thirst for human Blood. 
Peace grieved by Man, to brighter Regions fled, 
And angry Mars contending Nations led. 
Ambitious Youths with Thirst of Glory fir'd 
The proud Deformity of Scars admir'd. 
Power uncontroll'd maintained the wrongful Cause, 
Nor fear'd the weaker Force of silent Laws. 9 

The poet then paints a picture of the horrors of misgovern- 
ment, ending with a prayer that the gods may prolong the 
halcyon days of the Emperor Severus, 

Give Rust to Arms, and Leisure to the Song 
Preserve the Immortal Sire and aid the Godlike Son. 

The third book, like the third Georgic, opens with a statement 
of the subject, 

How captive Shoals reward the Fisher's Toils, 
What Force subdues, or specious Fraud beguiles, 
Attend great Prince, to thee the Seaborn Muse 
A Theme not foreign, tho' unsung, pursues. 

An address to the Prince follows, then very much as Vergil 
and the cynegetic poets sum up the qualities of the ideal stallion 

9 Cp. Georg. I, 505 ff.; Somerville, The Chase. See above, p. 131. 



140 



The Georgic 



and the ideal dog, Oppian draws a portrait of the toiler who 
lives by pursuing the creatures of the deep : 

First be the Fisher's Limbs compact and sound, 
With solid Flesh and well-braced Sinews bound. 
Let due Proportion ev'ry Part commend, 
Nor Leanness shrink too much, nor Fat distend. 

Judicious art with long Experience joyn'd 
Inform the ready dictates of his Mind. 

Let Resolution all his Passions sway. 

Nor Pleasures charm his Mind, nor Fears dismay. 

From short Repose let early Vigour rise. 

Well let his Patience and his Health sustain 
Jove's piercing Storms, and Sirius' sultry reign. 
Let him with constant Love the Sea pursue, 
With eager Joy the pleasing Toil renew. 
So Thetis shall reward her faithful Swain, 
And all his Labours please the God of Gain. 10 

Directions are given as to the season and weathers in which to 
fish, and the poet emphasizes the necessity of observing the 
winds. Vergil's " certain signs " have their place in the 
halieutic as well as in the georgic and in the cynegetic. 

Four sorts of fishers are described, those who use Hooks, 
Nets, Weels, and Tridents. The poet warns against the arts by 
which the Fishes cheat the Fishers, and continues with various 
practical directions. 

In the fourth book, Oppian, " inspired," sings the loves of 
the fishes. In the fifth book he sings mainly of the " cetaceous 
kinds," concluding with what might be described as a watery 
prayer that the sea yield tribute to the " Roman Lord " and 
the " world be kept secure for Caesar's reign." 

Oppian digresses from his theme frequently, telling many 
fables, and moralizing at length on such subjects as Sympathy, 
Love, Jealousy, Human Industry, the Nature of Man, the folly 

10 Halieutics, III, 45 ff . 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



141 



of trying to resist the Divine Powers and so forth. 11 Mr. 
Jones 12 is deeply moved by the " unaffected " piety and good 
nature found in the pages of the Halieutica. This poem, he 
writes of Oppian, " had we no other history of his Life, would 
represent him to us under the amiable character of a young 
gentleman of the liveliest wit, sweetened with the most engaging 
virtue, and ennobled by Religion. In all his Digressions and 
Reflexions, he recommends Virtue with so agreeable an air, and 
discountenances Vice after s.o moving a Manner, as shows him 
to have been the best good Man, but far from having the Worst 
natur'd Muse. . . . His Moral Reflexions are very fine and 
judicious . . . His Religious Sentiments, considering he was 
a Heathen, are very conspicuous in his account of Divine Provi- 
dence and the Divine Powers." 

Diaper and Jones' translation of the Halieutica is particularly 
valuable, not only as the sole English rendering of the poem, but 
as an eighteenth-century version of Oppian. The translation 
reads very much like an original eighteenth century product 
adorned, like almost all other products of the time, by flowers 
from the gardens of the ancients. Knowing the Halieutica only 
thru the English of Diaper and Jones, one finds it a little hard 
to understand how the grammarian Tzetzes, who paraphrased 
the poem, called Oppian an - c ocean of graces." 13 All poetry 
loses by translation; Greek poetry can certainly not be judged 
by imperfect specimens of the eighteenth century couplet, since 
it suffers enough from the best; and yet, remembering Pope's 
Homer, translated even as Nick Bottom was " translated," one 
reads with amazement in Mr. Jones' 14 Preface that the elder 
Scaliger calls Oppian " a divine and incomparable poet, one 
skilled in all Parts of Philosophy, the most perfect writer among 
the Greeks, and the only person that ever came up to Vergil." 
Standards of taste change, but the praise of divine beauty en- 

u Op. Deyeux, " Carnet du Chassomane." See above, p. 134. 
' 32 Op. ext., p. 7. 

13 Cp. the Bibl. pref. to Walton and Cotton, op. cit., p. xx. 

14 Op. cit. 



142 



The Georgic 



dures. Hence one feels that there is some slight lack of under- 
standing on the part of Mr. Jones when he writes, " Indeed, I 
know not how it happens, but there is scarce any of the ancients 
that deserves more or meets with less regard." 

2. John Denny s' "Secrets of Angling" 

From the time of Oppian of Cicilia until the beginning of 
the seventeenth century, I am acquainted with no didactic poem 
of importance on the fisherman's art. I know of only two works 
in which the subject is treated to any extent from the technical 
point of view. One is the Latin De Vetula or De Vitula written 
in the thirteenth or fourteenth century by Richard de Four- 
nival. 15 A record of the different modes of fishing with worm, 
fly, torch and spear, night lines and so forth is said to be found 
in this poem. 16 Piers of Fulham's Vayne conseytes of folysche 
love undyr colour of fysching and fowling, ascribed to the year 
1420, 17 is, as the title indicates, allegorical in character. There 
is nothing of the georgic in it except some interesting informa- 
tion concerning the arts of fishing and fowling. The following 
lines may give an idea of the poet's manner : 

But in rennyng ryvers that bee commone 

There will I fisshe and take my fortune 

Wyth nettys and with angle hookys, 

And large weris and spenteris in narrow brookys. 

The year 1613 begins an epoch in the history of the halieutic. 
There was published at this time in London, the first poetical 
treatise on the gentle craft, John Dennys' Secrets of Angling, 18 
a poem that has been occasionally imitated, but never equalled. 

15 See above, p. 29. "See Manly, op. ext., p. 563. 

17 See above, p. 29. 

18 Little is known of the life of John Dennys. He lived in the neighbor- 
hood of Pucklehurst, Gloucestershire, and was buried at Pucklehurst, 1609. 
That he was the author of the Secrets was not discovered until 1811. In 
the first chapter of the Complete Angler, Izaak Walton quotes five stanzas 
from the Secrets. At first Walton ascribed the stanzas to Jo. Da. Later 
Jo. Da. was altered to Jo. Davors. Othe had ascribed the lines to Donne 
or Davies. These verses are said to have been attributed to at least six 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



143 



John Dennys may have read Oppian of Cilicia, or he may 
not. He was certainly acquainted with the classics, but his 
verses give no conclusive evidence that he knew the Halieutics 
of the ancients. Altho he claims no debt to Vergil, his poem is 
undoubtedly modeled to some extent on the Georgics; but this 
belated sixteenth century imitation has none of the faults so 
conspicuous in the eighteenth century Yergilian imitations. 
Dennys evidently drew his inspiration in part from the Man- 
tuan; but it is an inspiration that breathes in the English poet's 
verse, not a distorted mask of the Latin singer, but an English 
creation living and lovely. 

The introductory note of Roger Jackson, the publisher, to the 
edition of 1613, is worth reading, for it is marked by truths 
and is otherwise pertinent to the subject. Jackson states that 
the author intended to print the Secrets in his life, but was 
prevented by death. The publisher adds of the poem, " I find 
it not only savouring of Art and Honesty, two things now 
strangers unto many authors, but also both pleasant and profit- 
able ; and being loth to see a thing of such value lie hidden in 
obscurity, whilst matters of no moment pester the stalls of every 
stationer, I therefore make bold to publish it for the benefit and 
delight of all, trusting that I shall neither disparage the author 
nor dislike them. 

" I need not, I think, apologize for either the use of the 
subject or for that it is reduced into the nature of a poem; for 
as touching the last, in that it is in verse, some count it by so 
much the more delightful; and I hold it every way as fit a 
subject for poetry as Husbandry. And touching the first, if 
Hunting and Hawking have been thought worthy delights and 
arts to be instructed in, I make no doubt but that this art of 
Angling is much more worthy practice and approbation ; for it 

poets of the name of Davies, due no doubt to the fact that J. D.'s poem 
was prefaced by certain commendatory verses signed Jo. Daves. The Se- 
crets of Angling was reprinted in Arber's English Garner, vol. I, 1877. 
More valuable editions are those of T. Westwood, London, W. Satchell and 
Co., 1883, and that of Piscator, Biblioteca Curiosa. Privately Printed, 
Edinburgh, 1885. For other editions see Westwood's Introduction, p. 6. 



144 



The Georgic 



is a sport every way as pleasant, less chargeable, more profitable, 
and nothing so much subject to choler and impatience as those 
are. You shall find it more briefly, pleasantly, and exactly per- 
formed than any of this kind heretofore." 

The Secrets of Angling may be described as a piscatory poem 
of the georgic type, written in three books, in eight-line stanzas 
of heroic measure, the first six verses riming alternately, the 
last two making a couplet. Dennys has no eulogies of the great, 
he has no address to a patron, no reference to famous historical 
characters, no device of foreign contrast, no panegyric to Great 
Britain. In other respects, however, he skilfully follows the 
Vergilian conventions ; and altho he does not sing the praises 
of Great Britain, the Muses seem to have granted to him as truly 
as to Vergil the love of his native fields and rivers. 

The first book has the conventional georgic opening ; but after 
stating his subject, the author adds a characteristic explanation 
of the nature of his work : 

Of Angling, and the Art thereof I sing, 

What kind of tools it doth behove to have; 

And with what pleasing bait a man may bring 

The fish to bite within the wat'ry wave. 

A work of thanks to such as in a thing 

Of harmless pleasure, have regard to save 

Their dearest souls from sin; and may intend 
Of precious time, some part therein to spend. 

A charming and appropriate invocation to the water nymphs 
follows ; after which there is an even more charming address to 
the brook " Sweet Boyd." 

More " profitable," but still pleasant, are the poet's instruc- 
tions concerning his art. Vergil gives detailed precepts regard- 
ing the implements of the farmer's toil. Dennys discourses of 
the implements of angling ; when to provide them, how to select 
and care for them. He even gives practical advice as to the 
garments of the Angler. But however homely his subject matter, 
his verse is rarely prosaic, and charming comparisons and 
pleasant episodes are skillfully interwoven with his precepts. 
The " Answer to the Objection," tho meant as a defense of the 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 145 



fisherman's art, is really a rhapsody in praise of country life, 
written with the enthusiasm of a lover of nature, and the 
reflexion of a religious philosopher. Some youthful gallant, 
admits the poet, will cry, perhaps, that it is a silly pastime to 
endure the toils and troubles of fishing, rather than to walk the 
streets in " nice array," to dance and sport and gamble in the 
town. Very wise and very gentle is the u Reply," 

I mean not here men's errours to reprove, 
Nor do envy their seeming happy state; 
But rather marvel why they do not love 
An honest sport that is without debate; 
Since their abused pastimes often move 
Their minds to anger and to mortal hate; 

And as in bad delights their time they spend, 

So oft it brings them to no better end. 

Quite as convincing in its own lesser fashion as Vergil's 
contrast between the joys and virtues of the country, the vices 
and vanities of the city, is Dennys' contrast between the whole- 
some and happy recreation of the fisherman and the miserable 
existence of the society trifler. Were it not for the phrasing of 
John Dennys, simple and forcible (in spite of occasional 
padding), one might fancy himself listening to some moralizing 
poet of the eighteenth century. The following lines are one of 
the most interesting of the many variations of Vergil's Prayer 
to the Muses: 19 

let me rather on the pleasant brink 
Of Tyne and Trent possess some dwelling-place; 
Where I may see my quill and cork down sink 
With eager bite of barbel, bleek or dace : 
And on the world and the Creator think, 
While they proud Thais' painted sheet embrace; 

Let them that list these pastimes then pursue 
And on their pleasing fancies feed their fill; 
So I the fields and meadows green may view, 
And by the rivers fresh may walk at will, 
Among the daisies and the violets blue, 
Red hyacinth and yellow daffodil, 



39 Cp. Ge&rg. n, 483-4. 
10 



146 



The Georgic 



Purple narcissus like the morning rays, 
Pale ganderglass and azure culverkeys. 

I count it better pleasure to behold 
The goodly compass of the lofty sky; 

The hills and mountains raised from the plains, 

The rivers making way through Nature's chain, 

With headlong course into the sea profound, 
The surging sea beneath the valleys low, 
The valleys sweet, and lakes that lovely flow. 

The lofty woods, the forests wide and long, 
Adorned with leaves and branches fresh and green; 
In whose cool bowers the birds with chanting joy 
Do welcome with their quire the Summer's Queen: 
The meadows fair where Flora's gifts among, 
Are intermixed the verdant grass between ; 

The silver-scaled fish that softly swim 

Within the brooks and crystal watry brim. 

The final stanza of the " Reply " has a rapturous note of 
religious joy in the things of the outward world. Almost a 
mystic, it seems, was John Dennys. 

All these and many more of His creation 

That made the heavens, the Angler oft doth see; 

And takes therein no little delectation 

To think how strange and wonderful they be; 

Framing thereof an inward contemplation 

To set his thoughts from other fancies free, 

And while he looks on these with joyful eye, 

His mind is rapt above the starry sky. 

In a pleasant episode the poet recounts the origin of the Art 
of Angling, an innocent variation of the Deucalion myth. When 
the new race of men sprang from stones after the Deluge there 
was no food for them, so Deucalion invented the art of angling 
and taught it to his people. Here the poet naively works in the 
theme of the Golden Age, which, he states, was a time when it 
was easy to angle, for the fish had not then been frightened of 
wicked men. 

After having traced the varied stages of his art the poet 
announces that his weary Muse must rest, and " breathe or pause 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



147 



a little at the least/' a conclusion suggesting the last two lines of 
the second Georgic. 

The opening of the second book of the Secrets recalls the 
beginning of the second Georgic. 

Before I taught what kind of tools were fit 
For him to have, that would an Angler be; 
And how he should with practice and with wit 
Provide himself thereof in best degree : 
Now doth remain to show how to the bit 
The fishes may be brought that erst were free; 

And with what pleasing baits enticed they are, 

To swallow down the hidden hook un'ware. 

The poet declares that he will not meddle with the great whale 
that hid the man of God inside him for three whole days, nor 
with the Ork that would have devoured Andromeda. He enum- 
erates other great fish of which he will not sing, then proceeds to 
name the various sorts for which one can angle, making his list 
with a grace and skill not unworthy of his Master. 

In writing of the gudgeon he makes an observation that proves 
his understanding of the first principles of the art of teaching: 

This fish the fittest for a learner is 

That in this Art delights to take some pain; 

For as high-flying hawks that often miss 

The swifter fowls, are eased with a train; 

So to a young beginner yieldeth this, 

Such ready sport as makes him prove again; 

And leads him on with hope and glad desire. 

To greater skill and cunning to aspire. 

jMusing on the capture of the Dace, he shows characteristic 
georgic realization of the dangers that lurk always in attendance 
on the joys of life, 

world's deceit ! how are we thralled by thee. 
Thou dost thy gall in sweetest pleasures hide ! 
When most we think in happiest state to be, 
Then do we soonest into danger slide. 
Behold the fish that even now was free, 
Unto the deadly hook how is he tied! 

So vain delights allure us to the snare, 

Wherein un'wares we fast entangled are. 



148 



The Georgic 



Writing of the Sewant and the Flounder, with poetic incon- 
sistency the poet who has but just sung the Golden Age as a 
time when fish were easily caught now pauses to reflect upon 
the cruel inequality of life in watery ways : 

Unequal fate! that some are born to be 
Fearful and mild, and for the rest a prey; 
And others are ordained to live more free, 
Without control or danger anyway. 

The poet then describes various kinds of baits for various 
fishes, with directions as to the manner of bestowing hook and 
bait in the different seasons. The concluding fancy is not inap- 
propriate : 

But Phoebus now beyond the western Ind, 
Beginneth to descend and draweth low; 
And well the weather serves, and gentle wind, 
Down with the tide and pleasant stream to row, 

Unto some place where we may rest us in, 

Until we shall another time begin. 20 

The third book treats of " the chief and fittest seasons " for 
angling, but before the poet gives his instructions in detail he 
decides that — 

It shall behove 
To show what gifts and qualities of mind 
Belong to him that doth the pastime love. 

Handsome rods, hooks of divers sorts, well-twisted lines, the 
finest tools avail nothing if the fisherman lacks certain necessary 
gifts of mind. Twelve virtues he must have : Faith and Hope 
and " Love and liking to the game," Patience to bear mishaps, 
and Humility to stoop or kneel, Strength, and Courage, and 
Liberality to feed the fishes often, to draw them near like the 
ancient hospitality that " sometime dwelt in Albion's fertile 
land," whence it is now banished, along with kindred virtues 
usually banished in the degenerate times that appear to have 
begotten georgic poetry. The Angler must have, also, Knowl- 
edge to make the fish bite when they are dull and slow, he must 

20 Cp. the concluding stanza of the Faerie Queen, Bk. I. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



149 



have Placability of Mind, he must have Thanks to that God who 
doth send both fish and fowl, 

And still reserves enough in secret store 
To please the rich and to relieve the poor. 

The eleventh qualification of the good Angler is Fasting long 
from all superfluous fare, the twelfth and last, Memory, not to 
forget to take all things needful for the craft. 

Dennys' lines suggest Oppian's portrait of the ideal fisher, 21 
but the English poet's angler is certainly not a copy of the Greek 
who gains his precarious living from the seas. Both must have 
strength and courage, but beyond this the resemblance does 
not go. 

The Angler must choose weather that is neither too hot nor 
too cold. He must not fish at fieece-washing time, nor at flood ; 

Nor when the leaves begin to fall apace, 
While Nature doth her former work deface, 
Unclothing bush or tree of summer's green. 22 

The best hours of the day are from sunrise to nine o'clock. 
So lovely is the poet's dawn that the reader feels the stir of 
longing to arise and go with the gentle Master Angler through 
the pleasant fields, amidst sweet pastures, meadows fresh and 
sound, 

When fair Aurora rising early shows 
Her blushing face among the Eastern hills, 
And dyes the heavenly vault with purple rows 
That far abroad the world with brightness fills ; 
The meadows green or hoar with silver dews 
That on the earth the sable night distils, 

And chanting birds with merry notes bewray 

The near approaching of the cheerful day. 

Each fish's favorite haunt is described for the benefit of the 
Angler, who must learn to know such lurking places. Then 
advice is given concerning all the hours when the Angler may 

21 See above, p. 140. 

22 Cp. Georg. n, 403. 

Ac iam olim seras posuit cum vinea frondes 
frigidus et silvis Aquilo decussit honorem. 



150 



The Georgic 



and may not fish ; and lest he may forget his tools a short lesson 
is given to assist the memory. And now, sings the poet, we are 
arrived at the last 

In wished harbour, where we wear to rest, 

And make an end of this our journey past: 

Here then in quiet road I think it best 

We strike our sails and steadfast anchor cast, 

For now the sun low setteth in the West, 

And ye boatswains ! a merry carol sing 

To him that safely did us hither bring. 23 

Considering Roger Jackson's statement that the author 
intended to publish the Secrets before his death, Westwood 24 
observes : " Perhaps he was withheld by some f aintness of heart 
and some wisdom of reticence. The epoch was a trying one for 
the minor muse. The elder bards were dying out, but the 
national air still vibrated to their divine singing. It was hardly 
strange that a poet unknown to fame hesitated to bring forth 
his simple song of bleek and bream." Yet it is the simplicity 
of the song that makes its charm — simplicity alike of diction 
and of spirit. The childlike joy in outdoor things, the early 
morning quality of the poem, reflect something of the life and 
glow of the earlier Elizabethans. John Dennys makes the 
didactic poets of the eighteenth century seem world-weary and 
sentimental. Thomson, who loved to lie abed till noon, writes 
feelingly of the beauties of the dawn, but John Dennys, at least 
in the angling season, lived among the meadows and streams of 
which he sings, and he rejoiced in the outdoor world from sun- 

23 These lines echo very closely the concluding stanza of the first book of 
the Faerie Queen, 

Now strike your sailes, yee jolly Mariners, 

For we be come unto a quiet rode, 

Where we must land some of our passengers, 

And light this weary vessell of her lode; 

Here she a while may make her safe abode, 

Till she repaired have her tackles spent, 

And wants supplide ; and then againe abroad 

On the long voiage whereto she is bent : 

Well may she speede, and fairly finish her intent! 

24 Op. cit., p. 1. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



151 



rise to sunset. His moralizings are quaint and pleasant, and 
sometimes wise, suited to one who loved the gentle craft. His 
poem is not a glorification of toil, but it calls alluringly to the 
joys of country life. There is in it a spirit that Vergil himself 
could not but have loved. 

William Lauson 25 remarks of the Secrets of Angling, " The 
Author by verse hath expressed much Learning, and by his 
Answer to the Objection shows himself to have been Virtuous. 
The subject itself is honest and pleasant ; and sometimes profit- 
able. Use it and give God all glory. Amen." A comment 
written with judgment that one appreciates all the more after 
having read the Secrets in contrast with the dreary dullness of 
the great body of georgic poetry. The Secrets of Angling is not 
a great poem, but it should hold an honoured place for sweetness 
of verse, for its beauty of description and for the lessons that 
the poet so gently and happily teaches. That this slight work 
has any importance in the history of English literature one can 
hardly say. Certainly, in the history of fishing literature no 
writer has graced his subject with lovelier lines. John Dennys 
must always hold an unrivaled place in the angler's library. 
Many readers have felt his poem's charm; lovers of poetry as 
well as lovers of the gentle craft owe a debt of gratitude for its 
rescue from oblivion. 

3. Later S event eenth-C entury Didactic Poems on Angling 

From John Dennys' Secrets to Barker's Delight is, undoubt- 
edly, a descent. However, I do not know of any writer after 
Dennys who treated the theme of angling in didactic verse, until 
in 1657 Thomas Barker produced a small volume which bears 
the full title, Barker s Delight, or the Art of Angling. This is 
a work " Wherein are discovered many rare secrets very neces- 
sary to be known by all that delight in that Recreation, both for 
catching the Fish, and dressing thereof," a quaintly written 

25 Comments on the " Secrets of Angling," Arber's English Garner, West- 
minster, Archibald Constable & Co., 1903, p. 237. 



152 



The Georgic 



book of prose instructions interspersed with bits of verse. 
Evidently Thomas Barker was not less skilled as a cook than 
as an angler. He appears less gifted as a poet. However, his 
verses have the merit of simplicity, and his instructions are 
generally to the point. I quote a specimen to show the author's 
manner : 

. . . Your lines may be strong, but must not be longer than your rod. 

The rod light and taper, thy tackle fine, 

Thy lead two inches upon the line; 

Bigger or lesse, according to the stream, 

Angle in the dark, when others dream. 

Or in a cloudy day with a lively worm. 

The Bradlin is best; but give him a turn 

Before thou do land a large well grown trout, 

And if with a fly thou wilt have a bout 

Overload not with links, that the fly may fall 

First on the stream for that's all in all. 

The line shorter than the rod, with a natural fly; 

But the chief point of all is the cookery. 

Following a section of prose instructions on frying trouts, he 

is inspired to rime on the subject of the making of restorative 

broth of trouts, ending with the naive piece of biographical 

information : 

for forty years I 

In Ambassadors' kitchens learned my cookery. 
The French and Italian no better can doe, 
Observe well my rules and you'll say so too. 

The following lines suggest Mother Goose : 

Close to the bottom in the midst of the water, 
I fished for a Salmon and there I caught her. 

The final effusion treats of baits, then closes with the 
following : 

But when of all sorts thou hast thy wish, 
Follow Barker's advice to cook the fish; 
Think then of the gatehouse for near it lives he, 
Who kindly will teach thee to make the flye ; 
And if thou live by a river side, 
Believe thou thy friend who often hath tried 
And brought store of fish as sheep to the pen, 
But friend let me tell thee once agen, 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



153 



His art to keep thee both warm and dry 
Deserveth thy love perpetually, 
He names three men to thee, like a good friend, 
Make use of them all, and so I end. 

In the last decade of the seventeenth century there are found 
two new efforts in verse on the subject of fishing; in 1692, a 
Latin poem entitled Piscatio, by the Reverend S. Ford, D. D. ; 
in 1697, The Innocent Epicure: or the Art of Angling, believed 
to have been written by Nahum Tate. The former was 
inscribed to Archbishop Sheldon and first appeared in the first 
volume of the Musae Anglicanae. According to Manly, 26 it has 
been translated and variously adapted. The chief features of 
the Innocent Epicure, says Manly, are its antithetical sentences 
and smooth periods. John Whitney praises the author of this 
poem as an abler artist than himself, but if one must judge 
from the following couplet quoted by Manly, the writer certainly 
anticipates the worst products of the eighteenth century: 

Go on my Muse, next let thy numbers speak, 
The mighty Mmrod of the streams, the Pike. 

The product must, however, have made some appeal to readers 
of the eighteenth century, for a second edition appeared in 1713, 
a third as the Art of Angling, in 1741. 

4. Eighteenth-Century Didactic Poems on Fishing 

John Whitney's The Genteel Recreation, or the Pleasures of 
Angling, A Poem with a Dialogue between Piscator and Cory- 
don was published in 1700, 27 shortly after the appearance of the 
Innocent Epicure. It is " a little treatise," which, says the 
writer in his preface, he composed " for his own pleasure." He 
knows that there be many abler artists, especially that ingenious 

28 Op. cit. 

27 An extremely rare book, originally printed for the author, of whom 
nothing is known except that he was the son of Captain Whitney, who com- 
manded one of the ships that accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh on his voyage 
to Guinea. One hundred copies were printed of the first edition, one hundred 
copies reprinted in 1820 for J. Burn, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. 



154 



The Georgic 



author of the Innocent Epicure. But he has takeu nothing from 
him nor from others who " have wrote of the Art of Angling." 
He thinks his own experience best to display his own thoughts, 
which he has done in a kind of rambling way. His thoughts 
sometimes run on the Muse as well as on the Fishes, for which 
reason he uses verse, most of which was composed by the river- 
side in such seasons the Fish did not yield the pleasure he 
expected. 

The poem is divided into four irregular parts, written in 
irregular and halting verse, the first an Introduction — a reflec- 
tion on the happiness of the " Man blest with a moderate state " 
secured to him by " Law's strong Adamantine chains." So blest, 

He gently can survey his Meads, and be 
Spectator of his own felicity; 

Those curious meads, 

New pleasure breeds, 

A purling Brook just by, 

Where the Inhabitants 

Of all the watery Elements, 

Strive Nature to outvie. 
Those various Beauties which the Medows breed, 
The watery fry in spangled glory far exceed, 
While carking cares that do the mind oppress, 
By Men unwary of their Happiness, 
Clog'd with the burden of Domestic cares, 

May here dispel those lingering fears, 
And learn new Joys, observing of the fry. 

The second part consists of twenty-nine lines in which the 
poet sings of the true content begotten by the angler who cannot 
be enticed from his delight by bags of gold. 

The third Part tells in sixty-seven lines of the taking of the 
Pike. It opens with the following couplet : 

Now with the Tyrant of the Silver stream, 

I first, kind Maro, will begin my Angling Theme. 

The thought of the " voracious Appetite " of the " Tyrant " 
enkindles the poet's fervour to fresh delight. Thus he sings : 

When fair Aurora leaves her dark caVern 
And Sol's uprising first I can discern, 
Shaking the moisture from his dew'y locks 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



155 



To set a Lustre on a Thousand Lady Smocks 
Enameling the Medow fair and bright, 
But just reliev'd from the terrours of the night, 
I march along . . . 

After which pleasant description the poet proceeds to instruct 
his reader in such practical details of the art as poles, baits, the 
haunts and habits of different fishes. 

The fourth Part consists of fifty-one pages that treat of 
angling in general. Thinking perhaps of Vergil's device of 
describing foreign lands, the poet mentions various localities 
which are for diverse reasons to be frequented or shunned by 
the angler. With some of these places he has had pleasant or 
curious experiences. Recalling a creature peculiar to Eton 
Bridge, the author describes him in the following remarkable 
fashion : 

Eoach-like scales, of burning gold, 

That shine like mettle from Pactolus rolled, 

Nameless he is, till some more fruitful pen 

Describes his wondrous make, like Adam when 

Baptizing Creatures with Immortal Names. 

The glory of great Hedway and more silver Thames. 

In an apostrophe to his friend Streatfield, the poet introduces 
a georgic feature; georgic is, also, the appeal with which he 
introduces his account of the Trout, 

Muse, sing now the Trout, with all his Arts, 
His haunts, his motion, and his sudden starts, 
When e'er a curious fly drops in the stream; 
Make him thy choice, and choose from him thy theam. 

Discoursing of the fishes' iEsculapius, the author digresses 
on the subject of physicians. He then justifies his craft, reflect- 
ing that Angling was sent by Heaven in order that by destroying 
those that would prey upon them, man may give to some of the 
fishes longer life. 

The " patient Muse" is requested to raise her fancy once 
again and sing of eels. As almost nothing seems to exhaust her 
patience the reader is regaled with this choice subject ; in the 
discussion of which the poet gives an account of eel fishing at 
night that introduces the georgic reflexion, 



156 



The Georgic 



A rustic with a flambeau in his hand 
Goes like a Page of Honor through the Strand 
When Madam she's retiring from the Play to Court, 
Cloy'd with vain repetitions of an Idle Sport, 

Vain is that pleasure yields us no delight, 

But dulls our over-clouded appetite. 28 

Perhaps no more sincere tribute has been paid to Vergil than 
the following: 

Now see, sweet Maro, of the Pearch, I sing, 
And dedicate to thee, who art the Muses King, 

My solemn Theme; 
Assist me then, 

Recorder of the Acts of God and Men, 
Lest that my trembling Pen in vain essay 
Ignis Fatuus like, lost in uncertain way. 
Had I thy genius, then my quill should raise 
Immortal glory to thy name with praise, 
While thou, blest Hero, to the Gods conjoyned, 
And, by eternal love, to Man combin'd, 
Shows us the Paths of Virtue how to tread, 
And magnify the Glory of the Dead. 
For thou alone 
Hast further gone 
In thine Immortal lays 

Than all the scribbling Poets in our last declining days. 
The author emphasizes the forgotten proverb that 

No Angler ought to swear, 
The least of oaths the Fishes soon will scare, 
And imprecations too make them the bait forbear. 

Giving an account of his luck at sport, Whitney modestly and 
piously remarks: 

Angler, had you been there you'd far'd as well as I, 
For Heaven's bounty Heaven be prais'd eternally. 

Writing of the voracious Chub, he pauses to moralize thus on 
vain Pride: 

Excess is hurtful. 

Who covet all, but little can enjoy; 



28 Cp. John Dennys on the life of the * Youthful Gallant," Arber's Eng. 
Garner, p. 201. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sport, 



157 



And much, to some's esteemed the meanest toy, 
Alexander conquered all, yet sighing wept. 
Saladine's victories ended in a shirt. 

A curious episode relating to the Bleak, sounds like an inno- 
cent parody on Aristseus and his bees. Beelzebub resenting the 
depopulation of his Kingdom, complains to his wife. Neptune 
is interviewed, and is about to starve the fishes, when a Bleak 
appears and brings about an amicable settlement. The writer 
incidentally indulges in some amiable satire on the Lady Birds 
and the Charters broke for a Female smile. 

The poet then sings the joys and profit afforded by Angling, 
ending with the safe reflexion, 

Labour in vain, the Ingenious do not prize, 
Pleasure that profit brings becomes the wise. 

The Dialogue between Piscator and Cory don, 2 * which may 
be described as a supplement to the Genteel Recreation, is an 
eclogue with georgic reflections and moralizations. Corydon, a 
herdsman, and Piscator, an angler, discuss their respective 
pleasures and profits. 'Corydon asks Piscator to declare the 
pleasures that he reaps, and prevails on him to spend a day by 
the riverside. Phillis, Chloris, and Hobb, rustic neighbors, 
appear and sing songs celebrating country joys and country 
virtues. After Piscator 's departure, Corydon recites the praises 
of angling, ending — 

Though I'm no Angler, Anglers still I'll love, 
For Angler's Patience comes 'from Mighty Jove. 

In 1729 Moses Browne's Piscatory Eclogues appeared. How 
far they are didactic in character I cannot say, for I have been 
unable to see them. They were reissued with other works in 
1739 under the title of Poems on various Subjects, separately 
in 1773 as Angling Sports, in Nine Piscatory Eclogues.™ 
Manly 30 mentions another halieutic belonging to the first half 
of the eighteenth century, a product that appeared in 1740, 

88 Whitney, op. cit., pp. 59 ff. 29 D. N. 5., vol. vn. 

30 Op. cit. 



158 



The Georgic 



entitled the British Angler, written by an author named 
Williamson, whom I have been unable to identify. If one 
judges by the specimen that Manly cites from the British Angler 
it must be pronounced a most unhappy effort. The citation is 
from a discussion on silk and hair lines : 

(Choose well your Hair, and know the vig'rous Horse, 
Not only reigns in Beauty, (but in Force; 
Reject the Hair of Beasts, e'en newly dead, 
Where all the springs of Nature are deoay'd. 

Perhaps because of lack of interest in the subject, perhaps 
because of discouragement due to such efforts as those of Browne 
and Williamson, English poets seem not to have attempted 
treatises on the gentle craft for two decades after the appear- 
ance of the British Angler. Still the theme of fishing does not 
disappear altogether from English verse; in 1750 the Reverend 
John Duncombe translated the greater part of Vaniere's treatise 
on fish-ponds, the fifteenth book of the Praedium Rusticum 31 
The translation may be read in the supplement to Daniel's Rural 
Sports. 32 

These verses, Vaniere remarks in a note, were written in the 
poet's earlier years. In the fashion of Pere Rapin, whom 
Vaniere thought it praiseworthy to imitate, many fables 33 are 
interwoven with the more serious subject matter. The verse is 
further adorned with constant moralizations, but the poet is not 
so far lost in morals and fables as to neglect to instruct his 
readers in the proper methods concerning the making and the 
management of fishponds and the art of ensnaring the fish. 

31 See above, p. 68. 32 Op. cit., pp. 35 ff. 

33 In the edition of 1746, Book xv of the Praedium Rusticum has a de- 
lightful illustration. A river is represented flowing between a turreted 
castle and a huge rock from which the nymph Truita (afterwards metamor- 
phosed into the trout ) , is leaping madly, pursued by her cruel admirer 
Lucius (afterward the pike). Below the rock an unmoved individual is 
casting a net into the water, and under a tree on the other side of the 
stream, are three fat, exulting cherubs, one in the act of landing a large 
fish. The cherubs suggest the first canto of M. Jammes' Georgiques chreti- 
ennes in which the poet fancies angels harvesting in the fields and hovering 
about the farmer's family at their household talk. See above, p. 47. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



159 



Discussing the sites for ponds, Vaniere writes with the heart 
of Vergil's teaching well in mind, 

Camporum qui plana colit, licet agger e multo 
Vix bene eontineat graviorum pondus aquarum 
Nil desperet; opum vis et labor omnia vincunt 34 

The following quotation from Duncombe's translation illus- 
trates very happily the poet's didactic manner. 

Now o'er the neighb'ring Streams extend your Nets 

And throw your lines iwell furnished with deceits, 

Join scarlet Colours, which exposed to view 

Fish thro' the water greedily pursue; 

And as a skillful Fowler, Birds employs, 

Which by their well-known Voice and treacherous noise, 

Allure their Fellows and invite to share 

Their fate entangled in the viscuous Snare; 

So Fish when taken, other Fish allure; 

Who, seeing them, grow dauntless and secure; 

But not thro' studied Malice they betray, 

But by our Art deceive the finny prey, 

(Man only with premeditated mind 

Betrays his Brethren and, ensnares Mankind. 

In 1758 the didactic Muse again raised her head vigorously, 
if one may not say triumphantly. Thomas Scott of Ipswich 
published a poem entitled The Art of Angling; Eight Dialogues 
in Versed The author acknowledges the fountain of his 
inspiration in his motto: 

Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes, 
Flumina amem, sylvasque, inglorius. 36 

In his note to the Reader, the Bookseller comments on the 
writer's sagacity in choosing a subject pleasing to the ruling 
taste of the age: 37 

34 Cp. Georg. I, 145, labor omnia vicit. 

35 Reprinted in Ruddiman's Collection of Scarce, Curious and Valuable 
Pieces," Edinburgh, 1773. 

36 Georg. n, 485. j/' 

37 At this time and during the first quarter of the ninetp^nth century the 
interest in fishing literature seems to (have almost e/ffial led the vogue of 
gardening literature in the early years of the eigiraenth century. Thomas 
Pike Lathy seems to have been more eag^r Hh«nwise in the manner in which 



160 



The Georgic 



The dialogues are furnished with notes signed with the names 
Zoilus, Aristarchus, Farnaby the Younger, Moses Browne and so 
forth. Zoilus comments thus on the title: " How artfully has 
this author screened himself from our attacks, by giving to his 
compositions the titles of dialogues ! O that he had called 
them eclogues ! I should then have been furnished with a fair 
occasion to display my reading and my critical skill, by showing 
that neither his characters nor his sentiments nor his expression 
agree with the simplicity so essential to that species of Poems." 

The first dialogue is " A Defense of Angling.'' 38 The scene 
is the meadows ; the season the coming in of Spring. Candidus 
and Severus speak. 

Candidus asks if virtue will frown upon them if they fish 
and stay in these "springing meads." Severus replies, 

Virtue, my friend, on no enjoyment smiles 
Which idle hours debase, or vice denies. 
The wise to life's momentous work attend; 
And think and act still pointing to their end. 

Candidus urges that pastimes are necessary, and compares 
them to parentheses in verse, but remarks that, as in verse, 
parentheses too long disturb the song, 

So pastimes which ingross too large a space 
Disturb life's system and its work deface. 

Severus argues for sports that arouse, not waste, the spirits. 
Candidus observes that some prefer the chase, and digresses to 
describe a hare hunt, but decides that each must amuse himself 
according to his taste, ending, 

I no man's joys arraign, 
Me, lonely vales and winding currents please, 
And arts of fishing entertain my ease. 



he tried to satisfy the public demand. In 1819 he carried out one of the 
most amazing of literary frauds, transferring bodily the Eight Dialogues 
into ten cantos entitled The Anglers with notes, etc., by Piscator (T. R. 
Lathy, esq. ) . After a number of copies were printed on royal paper, and 
one on vellum at a cost of ten pounds, the fraud was discovered and pointed 
out by Scott's nephew, who was in possession of the original manuscript. 
See D. N. B., Vol. xxxn, p. 171. 
38 Cp. John Denny s' " Answer to the Objection." 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 161 



Severus objects to the " mire and the sordid toils of fishing." 
Candidns explains that he has nothing to do with mire, " the 
decent angle's " his. Severus objects to the gout-bringing exhala- 
tions of the marsh. Candidus answers that he has sense enough 
to be warned of the approach of evening in time to get home 
before the "brown horrour woods and streams invades." Severus 
remarks that he doesn't call angling exercise. Candidus urges 
that the skilled Angler changes the scene, wanders from mead 
to mead, " still casting as he moves." He returns home blessedly 
tired, and spends his evening in the classic page, 

Or fancy, flowing with recruited vein, 

Pours out her pleasures in his rhyming strain. 

Let not my friend despise, with cynic mood 

Our pastime, honored by the wise and good; 

By blameless Nowell, Wotton's cheerful age, 

Colton's clear wit and Walton's rural page. 

With rapture these beheld the people'd flood, 

The chequer'd meadow and the waving wood; 

Here found in solitude emollient rest 

From rugged cares and tumults of the breast: 

Here virtues learn' d ( ill learned by formal rules ) 

Unknown to courts, unknown to wrangling schools, 

Patience and Peace, and gentleness of mind, 

Contempt of wealth and love of human kind. 

Severus is converted, but declares that if he ever wields the 
fisher's reed, its bark shall bear the maxim, 

All pastimes that engross too large a space 
Disturb life's system and its work deface. 

Whereat Zoilus remarks, " the shocking pride of this 
Author ! He hath first the presumption to dignify a dry saying 
of his own with the title of a maxim or a moral axiom, and next, 
the assurance to hint to the sellers of fishing tackle that he would 
have them get this same law engraven on the outside of every 
fishing rod in their shops." 

The second Dialogue, between Tyro and Piscator, treats of 
some general rules of the sport. The opening is a description 
of delaying spring and a moralization on deceived hopes. The 
Anglers, it appears, speak feelingly, since they have been so 
11 



162 



The Georgic 



deceived that it is necessary to give up their sport. Tyro, how- 
ever, begs instructions from Piscator before they part. Piscator 
begins with the following Preface: 

Walton could teach; his meek, enchanting vein 

The Shepherd's mingles with the Fisher's strain; 

Nature and genius animate his lines, 

And our whole science in his precepts shines. 

Howe'er, to fill this little void of time, 

And titilate your ear with jingling rhyme, 

Receive in brief epitome the rules 

Anglers revere, the doctrine of their schools. 

The rules follow. The verses, 

Your line, or by the spinning worm supplied 
Or by the high-born courser's hairy pride. 

are almost equal to Armstrong's description of an icehouse, or 
Mason's of the net, " the Sportsman's hempen toils." 39 

After some precepts concerning baits the author discusses ill- 
omen'd seasons, and weather signs. 40 Tyro asks one more 
favor, " The Angler's Song," and Piscator obligingly complies 
with his request, singing the praises of the Angler's life, far 
from the clamor and the sorrow that end the pleasure of the 
drunkard's bowl, and unshadowed by the dangers that threaten 
the hunter's life. The fisher can enjoy the outdoor world, and 
he can reflect "how time is gliding," but he refuses to mourn 
while the present is glad. He concludes with the courageous 
sentiment, 

Yea, when autumn's russet mantle 
Saddens the decaying year, 
I will fish and I will chant, till 
Feeble age shall change my cheer. 

The third Dialogue, between Garrulus and Lepidus, on 
" Angling for Trout," is pastoral rather than georgic. Musseus 
envying Severus' luck, decides to sit and sing to the naiads. His 
ruse succeeds ; the trout bite. 

The fourth Dialogue, on a Perch," is varied by a short narra- 



39 See above, p. 85. 



40 Cp. Georg. I, 351 ff. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



163 



tive episode ; then Lepidus being asked to cheer the dullness by 
the " farmer's song," breaks into a satirical ditty on the severity 
of the game laws, and the damage done to farm lands by the 
hunt. 41 Garrulus gets a fish, but his comments are interrupted 
by Lepidus, who tells a fish tale that Zoilus comments on in the 
notes as a " romantic affair, the whole of which he looks upon 
as a ' Swinging lie.' " Lepidus muses on the varied characters 
of fish. 42 Shock, the dog, blunders into the water after a water 
rat, and Lepidus recalls the story of a Dutch attendant who fell 
into the water. Zoilus comments severely on the relations of 
a preacher and laughter. Further moralizations follow on 
cheating. 

The fifth Dialogue, on the " Carp," begins with a conversa- 
tion on the innocent pleasure and beauty of a country walk. 

The next lines illustrate the georgic note of complaint against 
the evils of the time, and show again that poets of the georgic 
strain wrote insecure of audience even in the eighteenth 
century : 

Who sings of virtue in these iron times, 
Sings to the wind, for ears endure the rhymes, 
But fame and wealth reward the glorious toil, 
Scrawl but a novel or write notes on Hoyle. 43 

Lepidus makes an answer that illustrates the georgic feature of 
references to famous men, and shows the writer's common sense, 
if not his poetical ability — 

Lash not the times alone, withal complain 

Of bards unequal to the lofty strain 

The heavenly fire once warmed in Addison. 

A preceptual note is introduced in Lucius' advice to Verus, to 
turn from the sun, lest his shadow frighten the carp. The carp 
having been caught, Verus urges rest and conversation. Lucius 
suggests Greenland as the scene, thus introducing the familiar 

41 Cp. iSomerville, Gay and Shenstone. iSee above, p. 126. 

42 A georgic touch. Cp. Vergil on vines. Georg. n, 91-109. 

"Zoilus comments that the author speaks feelingly, as if from personal 
experience of rejected mss. or unsold copies. 



164 



The Georgic 



device of contrast with foreign country. Verus describes whale 
fishing. Lucius then bursts into a panegyric on Britain, which 
Verus thinks overdone at the present moment, as he regrets the 
loss of Minorca, and sighs for a race of honest men not to be 
corrupted by bribes and party sentiment. 

Lucius notes the mounting of the sun and philosophizes on 
the quick passing of life, the small pittance of time worth while, 
the necessity of spending that time well. 

The sixth Dialogue, between Axylus and Musseus, is mainly 
in praise of the value of the gentle exercise of Angling, in which 
the sportsman breaks no laws. Commenting on the fishes' 
enemy, the otter, a hunt is described, and the poet moralizes 
on the necessity of hunting human tyrants, otters that prey upon 
their fellow men. 

Dialogue eighth, between Axylus and Musseus, treats of trawl- 
ing for Pike. The manner of catching a Pike is described, also 
the manner in which Serena prepares it with " the churn's golden 
lumps of clodded oil." 

Axylus asks information concerning the origin of fishing. 
Musseus responds: 

Walton, our great forefather and our pride, 

The curious search with happy labour try'd; 

He found our ward in wild Arabia nurst, 

And patient Job great fisherman the first. 

But brains of scholars are inventive things; 

Read Monmouth's Geoffrey, read Buchanan's Kings. 

Yet if the Muse's wreath bestows renown 

Is not our name immortalized by Browne. 

Thinking of Yergil, Chiron observes : 

Nature, my friends, whose certain signs ordain 
The time to scatter and to reap the grain, 
Governs our art. 

Advice follows concerning the time to fish, the seasons being 
marked by the constellations. 

The three anglers continue to fish and converse by turns. 
They discuss the instincts of fish, and the question of whether or 
not the fishes hear. Musseus digresses to tell the story of a carp 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



165 



that came at the call of a Monk of St. Bernard on the banks of 
the Scheldt, and rings in a satirical passage on luxury and super- 
stition. Musseus remarks, 

Good cheer will mount me to Apollo's steep. 

An observation that causes Zoilus to comment on Musseus' in- 
sufferable arrogance and to name among those who have climbed 
Parnassus, Flatman, Tom D'Urfy, Taylor the Water Poet, and 
a few others needless to mention. 

The eighth Dialogue, on u Pishing for Pike with Lay Hooks," 
is particularly notable for its descriptions of nature. These 
optimistic sportsmen have praises even for winter. The Anglers 
congratulate themselves on the superior qualities of their joys, 
and finally they " descend from Pegasus and retire to share 
their frugal viand." 

The Art of Angling might be described as reading neither 
unpleasant nor unprofitable. The notes, presumably the 
author's, are amusingly facetious. The verse, in general, flows 
smoothly. The writer appears not to regard very seriously 
either his theme or his own poetic powers, so the whole poem 
is leavened by a vein of humorous common sense. The work is 
interesting as a specimen of the eclogue used for didactic pur- 
poses. It can hardly be called a masterpiece even of fishing 
literature, but it is a work that every reader who loves the gentle 
craft would gladly have on the shelves of his library. 

5. Nineteenth-Century Didactic Poems on Angling 

In the early years of the nineteenth century John Dennys 
was still read; and in his native land, the tribute of English 
verse was still being spent on the theme first honored by him 
with such a tribute. But thru a curious bit of irony, Charles 
Clifford, who read the Secrets and wrote the Angler, a Didactic 
Poem** has in the opinion of later critics immortalized himself, 

44 London, 1804. For my knowledge of this rare book, I am indebted to 
the kindness of Mr. Hyder E. Rollins, who read it for me at Harvard. 



166 



The Georgic 



not by his own production, but by the expression of his contempt 
for the Secrets. 45 

The 1804 edition of The Angler leaves the reader under the 
impression that the writer may have left his work uncompleted. 
The volume contains four hundred and ninety lines of blank 
verse headed Book I, and followed by the information " End 
of Book I." 

In the " Advertisement " prefixed to the poem, the author 
voices the sentiment of John Basse in The Anglers Song : 46 

I care not, I, to fish in seas — 

JVesh rivers most my mind do please. 

Clifford, however, expresses himself in the manner of the 
eighteenth century. His words are worth quoting, chiefly 
because they prove that he was acquainted with Oppian's 
Halieutica, but that he disdains to sing the song of the Cilician. 
Thus the English author writes : " The plan of Oppian confines 
him to sing of fishing on the main seas, as they are styled, or 
rather to the enumeration of various species of Eish which 
sojourn there, their habits, their amours, and modes of preying, 
both true and fabulous. The following work leaves these 
subjects wholly untouched. ... In the meantime the author 
confines himself entirely to the pursuits of the true and legiti- 
mate Angler, who with taper rod and dancing hook, gaudily 
fashioned like a giddy fly, exerts all his dexterity in beguiling 
the nobler inmates of the stream, the trout and salmon." 

Altho he scorned the plan of Oppian, Clifford evidently avails 
himself to some extent of the model of the Georgics. His poem 
begins with the stock opening, a statement of the subject, after 
which he offers a defense of Angling from the Imputation of 
Cruelty. To poetize his subject, he alternates his practical 
instructions with digressions. He introduces the subject of 
foreign lands in an account of the scenery and people of Green- 
land. This theme may have been suggested to him by Thomas 

45 See the " Advertisement " to Clifford's Angler, p. iv. 

** Old English Songs, Macmillan & Co., New York, 1894, p. 30. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



167 



Scott's account of whale fishing ; 47 but Clifford develops the 
theme very differently, dwelling, like Hesiod and Vergil and 
Thomson, on the distinctive features of the northern winter, 
altho he seems not to have borrowed anything more than the 
subject from the older poets. 

Eo actual hatred of human warfare appears to be expressed 
in The Angler, but one might imply that the author finds the 
struggle with the " finny tribe " more to his liking than an 
encounter on the field of battle, for his Muse sings — 

Of contests keen, not bloodless — victories 
Not without ambush, or manoeuvred skill. 
The warfare 'gainst the finny tribe she sings; 
When with the mellow morn the accoutred angler 
Hies to the limpid brook or broader flood, 
To wage the contest with the heedless trout 
Or floundering salmon. 

Clifford refers occasionally to well-known writers, to famous 
heroes and to mythological stories ; and he digresses frequently 
to describe natural objects. 

In the conclusion of his description of Greenland he points 
out the love of each individual for his native land, developing 
with some skill the generous sentiment Mr. Knight expresses in 
The Landscape : 

No state or clime's so bad but that the mind 
Formed to enjoy content, content will find. 48 

Mr. Clifford's lines, which have a decided Thomsonian ring, are 
as follows : 

Oh, bounteous Nature, falsely oft accused 

Of partial kindness! — Midst the dreary waste 

An airy palace gay thou rear'st in lieu 

Of sculptured domes; — for summer suns thou giv'st 

A midnight radiance; and tho bleak the clime 

And desolate the shore, yet o'er the wilds 

Roams a free tenant, unannoyed by care, 

And prizing more his rocks and fishy shores 

Than slavish Indians prize the spicy grove, 

The golden streamlet, flower-empurpled field 

And all the riches of their gem-fraught soil. 



47 See above, p. 163. 



48 See above, p. 99. 



168 



The Georgic 



Considered as a halieutic The Angler is a poem not without 
merit. The author shows a real love of Nature, and his descrip- 
tive lines are occasionally rich in color effect. But -Clifford's 
verses can bear no comparison with the Secrets of Angling. The 
later poem lacks entirely the flowing sweetness of John Dennys' 
stanzas. There is nothing in it of the almost childlike delight 
of the earlier poet in the outdoor world. One does not find in 
Clifford the naively pleasant quality that makes delightful John 
Whitney's imperfect verse, nor is there in The Angler the 
amusingly sententious manner that marks the Dialogues of John 
Scott. Critics have expressed some wonder that John Dennys 
was willing to devote so much poetic talent to the theme of 
Angling. If one may judge from his verse and from the history 
of the publication of the Secrets, John Dennys would have been 
utterly surprised at this wonder;, but the reader gathers from 
Clifford's Advertisement as well as from his verse that he felt 
that it was condescension on his part to give his production to 
the angling world. 

How many other writers after Clifford may have experi- 
mented with the subject of fishing, in didactic verse, I cannot 
say. The most notorious effort to satisfy the public's interest 
in the theme of Angling was the fraud of Thomas Pike Lathy, 49 
whose bold theft of Thomas Scott's work is an interesting illus- 
tration of the truth of the remark, " "No class of books is so 
eagerly bought up as those relating to fish and fishing — none 
sooner go out of print." 50 

Lathy 's stolen verses were printed in 1819. After that I 
know of no attempt at a didactic on the fisher's art except a 
lengthy poem on " Trolling," published in 1839, in W. Watt's 
Remarks on Shooting in Verse. Manly, 51 to whom I am 
indebted for my slight knowledge of this composition, remarks 
of the author that u he seems to be one of that class of writers 
who have an idea that anything which rhymes is poetry, and 

49 See above, p. 159, n. 37. 

50 See " The Angler's Library," op. cit., p. 155. 
01 Op. cit., p. 668. 



Didactic Poems on Field Sports 



169 



though his description of the tackle and the way of using it 
in this branch of angling is correct enough, the poem is hardly 
worth reading." 

The story of the halieutic can not be said to work up to a 
climax; but it makes a very pleasant and a very interesting 
chapter in a study of the developments of georgic poetry. 
One curious feature in the history of the halieutic is its 
apparently rare occurrence in French and Italian literature. 
Tiraboschi 52 mentions a Halieutica written by E"icolo Par- 
tenio Giannettasio in 1689, but I know nothing whatever of the 
character of the work. Vaniere wrote of Fishing in his 
Stagna; 53 whether in his poem on Agriculture de Rosset treats 
of the fisherman's art while discussing the subject of fish- 
ponds 54 I cannot say. 

In English poetry the halieutic is a much more frequent type 
than the cynegetic. Certainly an unprejudiced reader finds 
much more pleasure in the pages of the halieutic than in the 
pages of the cynegetic poets. The pursuit of angling by no 
means makes of its followers great writers, but it is a pursuit 
whose wholesome character is generally reflected in the pages 
of those who have devoted themselves to celebrating the fisher- 
man's art. If there is plenty of doggerel to be found in the 
compositions on angling, there is also much really charming 
verse. The joys of early morning, the spirit of meditation 
begotten by sky and wood and water are not things to be scorned. 
The poets of the gentle craft have made little pretense to preach 
the doctrine of constant labor, but they have proved the whole- 
someness of their recreation, which needs no abler defense than 
John Dennys' " Reply to the Objection." The objection to the 
wasted energy in a study of the didactic poem on the fisherman's 
art needs no better defense than a reading of John Dennys' 
Secrets of Angling. 



52 Op. cit. 

M See above, p. 68. 



See above, p. 158. 



170. 



The Georgic 



CHAPTEK VII. 



Conclusion. 

In this study I have attempted first to define the georgic as 
a literary type, and to show that as a type it is clearly distinct 
from the pastoral, altho closely related to it ; secondly, to sketch 
in outline the general history of the georgic, to give some idea 
of the variations in the development of the type, and to classify 
these variations; thirdly, to treat in detail as fully as possible 
English georgics on general agriculture, on gardening, and on 
field sports, and to discuss, also, to some extent French and 
Italian didactic poems on these themes. In studying the indi- 
vidual developments of the georgic type, I have tried to consider 
them in relation to the other compositions included in the same 
group, to show in how far they are Vergilian in spirit and in 
form, and in how far they are of value as reflections of the 
literary influences or of the temper of the time. 

The georgic as a genre cannot be disregarded. It persists 
clear-cut, unmistakable in. its leading features, thru all its 
phases, from the serious didactic treatment purely of field work, 
such as Alamanni's Coltivazione, to the burlesque imitation 
with its background of city streets exemplified in Gay's Trivia. 
In general, except for the rural setting and the occasional 
appearance of the shepherd on the scene, the georgic holds 
clearly apart from the pastoral. Occasionally the types cross. 
Eor example, Bloomfield's Farmers Boy (p. 45, n. 69) has 
been said to be the most truly Theocritean piece in the English 
language, but it is a poem that has the realistic qualities of the 
georgic, and that illustrates the georgic features of digressions 
arising from the theme, altho it does not deal with rules of 
practice, nor with the science of agriculture. John Whitney's 
Dialogue between Piscator and Corydon is a pastoral of mixed 



Conclusion 



171 



character, exemplifying certain conventions of the georgic 
(p. 157). 

The story of the georgic begins about the eighth century 
B. C. with the Works and Days of Hesiod, and ends in the 
twentieth century A. D. with the Georgiques chretiennes of 
Francis Jammes (p. 46). A loug story, but so far as I have 
been able to discover, there are breaks in it of centuries at a 
time. From Vergil, who imitated the subject matter of Hesiod' s 
Works and Days, and created the literary type of the georgic, 
to Gioviano Pontano, who wrote the Garden of the Hesperides, 
or the Culture of the Citron just before 1500, there can hardly 
be averaged a georgic a century, and of these not one is both 
georgic in subject matter and Vergilian in plan. However, the 
georgic, like the pastoral, altho in lesser degree, has had its 
periods of vogue due to the circumstances or to the temper of 
the time. But these periods of favor lie far apart. 

Until the sixteenth century I have found no new develop- 
ments in the georgic type except Columellas' hexameters on 
gardens (p. 75), the poems on field sports represented by the 
Cynegetica and the Halieutica, the poems of Gratius and Neme- 
sianus and Oppian, and the didactic works on Falconry and on 
the chase of the stag found in mediaeval France (pp. 110 ff.). 
That the subject of fishing was one of interest in the days of 
Oppian of Cilicia may be judged from the fact that the Halieu- 
tica was publicly recited at Borne in the presence of the Emperor 
Severus and his family. The mediaeval didactics on the chase 
were probably due to the interest of the great baronial lords in 
that subject. 

In the sixteenth century, in Italy, several new developments 
occur in the history of the georgic. Pontano's Garden of the 
Hesperides was written before 1500. After that, not only are 
there new poems on agriculture and on the chase, but there are 
Vergilian didactics on bees, on silkworms, on navigation, even 
on the rearing of children (p. 31). And in Germany, Thomas 
Kirchmayer's Agricultura Sacra represents a curious adapta- 
tion of georgic conventions to a religions theme, like the similar 



172 



The Georgic 



adaptations of pastoral conventions found in the fourth or fifth 
century (p. 38). These sixteenth-century productions are due 
chiefly to the fact that at this period in Europe, particularly in 
Italy, any imitation of the classics was regarded as worthy of 
praise. 

In the seventeenth century the georgic almost disappears; a 
few angling poems (p. 32), Pere Kapin's Horti and another 
Latin poem on gardens seem the sole representatives of the type. 
In the eighteenth century not only were Vergil's didactics read, 
translated and imitated, but everything else in the nature of a 
georgic was brought out of the past, translated, imitated, or 
reimprinted. John Phillips' Cyder and Thomson's Seasons 
appear to have given the impulse to the fashion (p. 35). Thru 
their interest in Thomson, the French, usually averse to didactic 
poetry of any kind, begin to see the world of nature with new 
eyes, and finally experiment with georgic verse on various 
themes. Possibly thru English influence, Italian interest in a 
type of poetry created on English soil is once more revived. In 
England, in France, and in Italy almost every development of 
the genre occurs, from general agricultural treatises to the serio- 
comic burlesque with a background of city streets. So the 
georgic type of poetry appears to have passed in a circular 
fashion from Italy to England, and back again from England 
to Italy, travelling along with the eighteenth-century love of 
nature and English gardens and all other things romantic. 1 

A study of the georgic often seems to lead thru endless wastes 
of dreary reading. The genre of the Yergilian didactic is an 
outworn fashion. Francis Jammes, it is true, was bold enough to 
entitle a book of poems Les Georgiqu.es chretiennes, but he 
follows Vergil's conventions only in part. Modern readers 
regard the eighteenth-century popularity of the georgic as an 
added proof that there was little poetry in the neo-classic age; 

1 The history of the eighteenth century georgic is curiously analogous 
to the story of the word romantic, which was first used in England, then 
introduced from England into France and Italy and Germany where it 
acquired a new and important meaning with which it was brought back 
again to England. 



Conclusion 



173 



as a curious phenomenon of literary taste that can be explained 
only by the assumption that the period was one curiously lacking 
both in a sense of artistic fitness and in a sense of humor. 

The georgic as a poetic type appealed strongly to the 
Augustan age. Shenstone was only voicing the general senti- 
ment when he wrote in his Prefatory Essay on Elegy that 
" Poetry without moralizing is but the blossom of a fruit tree." 
In the early years of the century a new school was growing up 
side by side with Pope and his followers, a group of poets with a 
more or less developed love of the woods and fields, men who 
were tired of the town and the literature of polite conversation, 
ready to rerolt against them, and almost ready to revolt against 
talk of reason and morals and intelligence. The habit of moral- 
izing was deep rooted in the British temperament, and the 
fashion of imitating the classics had become second nature. 
Vergil's Georgics offered all the qualities that appealed to eigh- 
teenth-century lovers of nature ; it was a classic, a literary model 
perfected by a great artist. Each of Vergil's Georgics is a mas- 
terpiece. What one man can do why not another ? But the 
way of the georgic is perilous. The Mantuan's name became a 
light leading thru deserts. Huchon does not exaggerate when 
he classes Vergil " mal compris," as among the most pernicious 
influences of the eighteenth century. 2 A great poet can take the 
substance from the milk and water of a lesser writer and make 
it virile. Much more easily a lesser poet can attempt to imitate 
a great poet and produce something worse than milk and water. 
Especially easy is it for an English poet to fail when he takes a 
Latin poem for his model. The English and the Latin tongues 
are essentially different. An English poem lives only when it 
is English. Vergil's diction becomes inflated bombast when 
unskilled writers try to use it. Milton succeeded in imitating 
Latin construction and expression only because he was, like 
Vergil, a genius, and a master of harmonies. John Phillips 

2 Rene" Huchon, Un poete realiste anglais: George Crabbe, 115^-1832. 
Paris, 1906, p. 149. But the French critic carries his point far when he 
classes Crabbe's Library as " a degenerate son of the Georgics. 1 " The 
Library is a didactic, but it is not of the georgic type. 



174 



The Georgic 



attempting to imitate Vergil and Milton wrote an interesting 
poem that is generally neglected. Phillips' poem is interesting 
partly because the poet writes with accurate knowledge of his 
subject, partly because he saves himself to a certain extent by a 
sense of humor. He made a strong appeal to a classic-loving 
age. Thomson, who was a born poet, altho not a great genius, 
succumbed to the appeal. Vergil and Phillips helped to inspire 
some of the worst lines that the Scotch poet wrote. Studied 
line for line in Otto Zeppel's variorum edition of the Seasons, 3 
the effect of the Vergilian influence can be seen in all its disas- 
trous power. When Thomson confines himself to the use of 
simple Anglo-Saxon words he frequently writes lines of haunt- 
ing melody, and he himself confesses that he owes what is best 
in his poetry to his early love for Spenser. But in an age when 
it was considered praiseworthy to imitate not only the form, but 
also the expression of the classics, Thomson was encouraged to 
continue on an evil way. And the influence of Thomson, almost 
as powerful on the continent as in England, lasted for more 
than a hundred years. Had the Scotch poet refrained from 
writing with " the page of Vergil literally open before him," 
there might be another chapter in the history of English litera- 
ture. 

But speculations are idle. The fact remains that for all its 
difficulties the georgic persisted, and that if among the develop- 
ments of the type there are many failures, there are also a few 
poems of enduring charm, such as Tansillo's Podere, John 
Denys' Secrets of Angling, many passages of Thomson's Seasons 
and the Primi Poemetti of Giovanni Pascoli. The type may in 
general have failed to justify itself artistically, but it is of 
importance in literary history. It has been said that in Hesiod's 
Works and D\ays there is the reverse of Homer's picture of 
ancient Greek social life. Vergil's Georgics are regarded as the 
most artistically perfect work of Latin antiquity. Reading 
J them one cannot fail to learn much of Vergil's Italy. Alamanni's 
Coltivazione is of great importance in the literary development 

3 Palaestra, lxvi. 



Conclusion 



175 



of the Florentine tongue and in the history of Italian blank 
verse. Eighteenth-century georgics on gardening illustrate the 
germ of one of the most prominent ideas in the famous quarrel 
between classicists and romanticists, and it must be remembered 
that the Abbe Delille (p. 34; pp. 88 fl\), who spent so much 
time and enthusiasm in the translation and in the imitation of 
Vergil's Georgics, was regarded by the foremost literary critics 
of France as among the greatest writers of his day, a poet so 
beloved that at his death all France mourned. 

iSTo study of the eighteenth century, particularly in England, 
can be complete without a knowledge of the georgic. Thru it 
the student gets at the heart of eighteenth-century tastes and 
ideas, and in this respect the type is hardly less important than 
the eighteenth-century novel. 

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the fashion of 
the georgic began to decline. Inevitably it was a fashion that 
could not continue; even in the eighteenth century one hears 
poets such as Mason and Cowper doubtful of popular applause 
when their subject is didactic (pp. 87, 95). Miss Lowell says 
that it must be confessed that Francis Jammes' Georgiques 
chretiennes are " a little tedious/' and Jammes does not attempt 
the most difficult features' of the georgic. However, his book is 
a work crowned by the French Academy, and since its publica- 
tion in 1912 it has passed thru five editions. There is in it a 
little of the charm of Goldsmith's Deserted Village, with some- 
thing of Vergil's understanding of the Italian rustic ; and prob- 
ably the religious character of the book has helped to insure its 
success. Like Vergil, Jammes laments the desertion of the 
fields; in raising his voice against the evils of the religious 
proscriptions in France, he adds a new variety to the present 
day ills that writers of georgics have been rehearsing since 
Hesiod's time. 

The Georgiques chretiennes are an interesting illustration of 
the revival of outworn conventions after a long period of neglect, 
a proof that the old themes live eternally, and that altho the 
world today represents new developments, it is still the same 
as the world of yesterday. 



